


Despair And Defiance

by Arkada



Series: Hand In Mine [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Author regrets nothing, Brotherly feels, FrostIron - Freeform, Jotun!Loki, M/M, Odin's A+ Parenting, So much angst, Temperature kink, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:59:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkada/pseuds/Arkada
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a fundamental law of the universe: events have consequences. Events like Thor’s loyalty being torn between two points. Like Tony quite possibly not entirely definitely maybe becoming obsessed with Loki. Like Loki daring to breathe for one moment longer.</p><p>Consequences like blood and ice and pain. And that must be lived with.</p><p>If it doesn’t kill them first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stripped

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own The Avengers or Thor. Given what I'm about to do, let's all take a moment to be grateful.
> 
> For those of you who have been holding your breath for the past month, my apologies, and I hope it's worth the wait.

Loki’s wrists ached under the heavy metal of the manacles. They had been more amusing than anything else, the first time he had worn them on Midgard, nothing more than a statement. _Look, Loki is bound, you are safe again!_ Though they had hurt, too, clamped down tight around his bones, the edges digging in with every movement. Then he had only worn them briefly; now it had been hours, and his skin was rubbed raw, his flesh swollen and bruised.

He would be bloody by the end of the day if Odin did not order the chains removed. And likely he would not. But beyond the pain, it made no difference. Loki was waiting, and he could do that under a thousand chains. He would hear Odin’s judgment, though he already knew what it was, _guilty_ , he would take whatever new punishment was given, and then it would be over. It would end. Odin would relent. Whatever he sentenced Loki to, it could not last.

He had thought it galling to have to seek forgiveness for treachery and betrayal of such magnitude as he had committed in the past. It was far worse to be made to atone for something he had not done, to kneel before all Asgard once more and not deserve it.

_It matters not. It will end. Just wait._

Odin stood from his throne, striking the floor with the butt of his spear, sending a low rumble through the hall. The voices of the massed crowd fell almost before the note had died away.

Loki could have done that himself, once. Could have chained their words and silenced even their thoughts. No longer, not with only remnants of his magic left to him, the rest kept away by Odin’s own power. Not when he was the one chained and silenced.

How much more did Odin mean to take from him?

“Loki,” Odin said, “Silvertongue…"

Well. There was his answer. Odin meant to take his home, for one thing.

 _Silvertongue, indeed_. Very subtle. Calling him _Odinson_ would provoke his rejection, but calling him _Laufeyson_ would be rejection of _him_. Not so, the form _of Asgard_. He had lived here all his life; his father was nothing to do with that. _Loki of Asgard_ would reject nobody.

But he wasn’t _Loki of Asgard_ either. Odin’s choice had made that clear. Loki was not of Asgard, not anymore. Odin did not have to say the words to cast him out; their absence did enough. Loki was no longer welcome, nor even wanted.

No. Thor still wanted him. And Stark.

 _Stark_. The very name hummed heatedly on his tongue.

Warm skin glowed beneath his hands, and Stark’s fingers seemed to slide between his wrists and the manacles, soothing the deep, sharp pain and refusing to let the metal touch him.

But Stark could not protect him from everything. All Asgard stood against Loki now. Even Odin alone was more than Stark could counter.

“Despite your actions, we have extended every love and courtesy to you…”

Yes, love, to choke his power and leave it within his reach but unable to be touched. Courtesy indeed, to hold his trials, this one and the first, before the entirety of the realm, and turn him into a public spectacle.

“Yet you have denied our hand held out to you…”

Denied. He had had nothing to deny. Odin had not even seen him in the months after his first trial. Kings avoided traitors, and that had been all they were. King and traitor, and a thousand years of being father and son had meant nothing, and meant nothing still.

“You have proven unrepentant…”

Of course he was. He did not regret a single thing that had happened. He did not wish away Stark’s hand in his, Stark’s lips on his, Stark’s voice telling him _it’s never too late_. He had found something that he _wanted_ , at last, heat that he could revel in and a mind he could devote himself to. No, he regretted only that they had been parted.

“You have abused the trust we gave you…”

Trust indeed. Trusted to leave Asgard, with Thor not an inch from him and Rogers and Stark shadowing his every move. Very trusted.

“You took advantage of our generosity to brutally attack and rape an innocent man…”

_I did not, and I loathe you for thinking so!_

“You have broken the agreed bindings on your magic…”

Yes, for a certain interpretation of _agreed_. Odin had imposed them before Loki could object. He had left enough, so he had said, _for your own protection_. Loki had taken more when it had proved to be _not_ enough for his own protection. His protection, and Stark’s.

“The magic I left you with, you have used to hurt and to deceive. You are unworthy of even this small mercy...”

 _Unworthy_. How did that word, that cursed word, follow him so? Thor had been declared _unworthy_ , and Loki had felt it when he had tried to lift Mjolnir during Thor’s exile. And here it was again. One would think the king of the gods would have a larger vocabulary. Loki’s lips twitched beneath the gag, smile stolen by the metal clamping them shut.

Odin flung a hand out towards Loki. “I strip you of your power!”

Something hard and heavy burst inside his stomach and dragged him down, curled over the floor. His magic flared, icy coals leaping up against the threat, fighting back the weight that smothered them. His hands slipped to the floor to keep him upright, elbows braced. He must have looked pathetic, kneeling there, chained and gagged and unable to even hold his head up.

His every strength was being stolen from him, he should have been grateful he was not flat at Odin’s feet.

Then Odin pulled, and Loki’s magic tore from his body, the hot-cold current draining, running out to follow Odin’s call. The shimmering under his skin began to fade and die, the power of centuries withering away in mere moments.

And Jotun blue bled out into sight over his hands.

They would see. They would all see, all know. All of Asgard would know he was a nightmare made flesh, an impostor, a pet kept in Odin’s house. He could hear their horror leaking from them, their gasps short and loud.

But they would forget, they _would_ , it would all be over, it would all go away, like nothing had ever happened. Thor already knew what he was, and Thor did not care, and Asgard was nothing compared to Thor. Loki would take this, he would bear it, and everything would go away.

And lashes of pain burst up over him.

_No!_

Dark and deep and sharp and _raw_.

And growing.

_NO!_

Blood sprang from his body, soaking through his clothing, dragging the fibers into the shredded skin to scrape and tear and dig deeper, deeper, _deeper_. His hands shattered and he pitched forward, bones broken, flesh shrieking, agony crawling up his arms.

_How much? How much more?_

_Enough._

He forced his head up through the pain, and looked Odin in the eye. He still looked calm, untouched by Loki’s blood. Ignorant?

He would not be for long.

_I wish I could see your face when you kill me._

And the last of his skin was ripped away, and Loki screamed.


	2. Left

_Six hours earlier:_

 

The winds of the Tesseract whipped around them, flashing and flaring out into the blackness beyond their bodies. It was like traveling by the Bifrost, and yet not; the bridge was light, clear and calm, but the Tesseract was kin to fire, and it burned almost wildly even as it brought them home. 

Their recent excursion to Midgard had borne strange results, yet results all the same. After the wrongs that had come from their previous journeys, Thor thought that this time, all had gone well. His trust in Loki was repaid. Events had fallen out such that Loki could have fled easily and hidden from them all, and Thor would not have blamed him. Yet Loki had returned with Thor to Asgard, where he knew the rest of his punishment, continued imprisonment, awaited him. Yes, for all he had done, there was still good in Loki. Thor still had his brother.

Some kind of pressure built; they were slowing down, the fire starting to fade. Loki’s eyes met his, and he nodded. They had come home.

The Tesseract dropped them hard against the floor. Wild, indeed. Thor slowly picked himself up, body aching as though he had overexerted himself. He reached out to help Loki rise, and smiled as Loki took his hand. For Loki to accept aid had ever been rare, but for him to take it now meant much.

Thor had not been kind to him on Midgard. Loki’s forgiveness was a great gift.

Loki’s eyes caught on something over Thor’s shoulder, and he nodded his head towards it. “Thor.”

Thor let go of Loki’s hand, and turned to see. Four guards stood in the doorway to the room, fully armed and armored. One held a locked metal box, its ornamentation sharp and severe. The box that held the chains and gag Loki had been wearing when Thor had first brought him back from Midgard.

Why had they brought it now?

“What is this?” Thor demanded. Did they mean to chain Loki again? Thor would not have that; he had been released from the bindings upon his arrival those months ago, and they had not been needed since. Loki’s willing return with Thor now was a clear sign of his continued good faith. Why were the guards even here?

“On the orders of Odin Allfather, King of Asgard, Loki Silvertongue is to be bound and silenced until his crime undertaken upon Midgard can be judged.”

Mjolnir hung heavy at his belt, but he could not attack soldiers acting under his father’s commission. “His crimes on Midgard _have_ been judged!” Thor had been at that judgment, had heard Father declare that Loki would be a prisoner until he had shown repentance for attacking Midgard. Thor had been charged with guiding Loki down that path. Why was this now at issue?

“Forgive me, I spoke unclearly.” The guard holding the box tipped his head back to look Thor evenly in the eye. “The crime of one day past. The rape of the mortal, Tony Stark.”

All Thor’s blood ran cold at once. Mere hours ago he himself had believed Loki guilty of that crime. How had the falsehood made it to Asgard before them? How had Father learned even part of the tale?

Loki would know, clever Loki. Thor spun to face him.

Loki’s jaw was set tight, his hands pressed together so hard the blood had drained from his skin. He met Thor’s eyes, and the corner of his mouth twitched in what was almost a smile. “Heimdall, brother. Heimdall was doubtless watching my every move on Midgard. You know what he saw. The same thing that you did.”

Loki’s nails leaving bleeding gouges in Stark’s chest, Loki’s hands pinning him to the floor, Loki’s hips driving between his legs.

“Yes, but-” But it had not been what it had looked like. It had not been rape. It had been one of Loki’s sly ploys, so sly that it had fooled Thor utterly. And, it seemed, Heimdall.

“But nothing, Thor. Leave it be.”

“Leave it be? How can you ask me to leave it be?” Thor seized Loki’s shoulders. Their eyes met. Loki’s were still and steady, almost frighteningly so, as if he had already given himself up to this. “We both know the truth! You shall not be punished, not like this, not falsely.” Thor would not be able to bear that, knowing he had made the same judgment, had vowed to torture and slay Loki in vengeance. He could not see his brother handed over to that, not when he had come so close to bringing it down upon him.

“I am already being punished for invading a whole world. Harming one mortal will not add much to that tally.”

“It matters not,” Thor said, holding him tighter, as if he could force his love through Loki’s skin. Love, and perhaps some sense along with it. “It matters not. You are innocent. And you will _not_ be punished for this.”

Loki’s face softened and his eyes were saddened as he looked up at Thor. “That’s really not up to you.” His gaze flickered over Thor’s shoulder again.

Thor released Loki. It would not be the last time he held his brother. He turned to face the guards. He was Thor Odinson, and his brother’s treatment _was_ up to him. “I will not permit him to be bound.”

The senior guard shook his head. “My prince, my orders come from the Allfather’s own mouth.”

“Then I will go to the Allfather myself.”

The man bowed his head in brief acknowledgement, and called his fellows forward with a wave of his hand. Thor’s heart clenched, cold in his chest, as they surrounded Loki and the box was opened. He could not argue with his father’s command, but his own wrists felt heavy as the manacles closed around Loki’s, and his own jaw stung as the gag was fitted.

This could not be happening. It could not be permitted. Loki had already suffered Thor’s mistrust and hatred for this. Those hours he had stood there, hand around Loki’s throat, pinning him to the wall, were bad enough. To heap indignity upon indignity like this simply could not stand. Loki’s actions had saved all of them. Stark had needed the time that Loki provided in order to come up with a plan to escape. And escaped they had, freeing Thor and the captain in the process.

He met Loki’s eyes as he was led from the room, cool and calm over the gleaming metal of the gag. _Leave it be._

But Thor could not. Thor had failed Loki once in this matter, in believing the lie on Midgard. He would not allow others to believe it now.

Father had to see the truth.

~

Tony stared malevolently at the syringe.

It stared right back.

Just because he was the only one who could ever do anything right didn’t mean that he had to do everything! Except for the part where it totally, absolutely, did.

Because SHIELD’s medical section had cleared him and kicked him out, but what the hell did they know? Were people just getting doctorates by mail order these days? They hadn’t even kept him overnight for observation, not that he’d wanted to be there any longer than he’d had to. Idiots.

Secret underground cells didn’t exactly come stocked with condoms, and god only knew what an Asgardian STD would present like. It hadn’t exactly been what he and Loki had talked about after the potential exposure, either, mostly it had been about escaping said secret underground cell, and then about _giving up power_ and _letting go_ and kissing, damn, that kiss, his lips cold and soft…

Not the point.

The point was that SHIELD medical would probably miss anything wrong with him, so he’d handed the whole problem over to the one person he could trust to be smart enough for this.

Jarvis.

Who had then promptly asked him for a blood sample.

One blood sample was reasonable enough, more or less, but Tony would have problems if Jarvis kept asking him for _more_. But his AI wasn’t capable of that sort of sadism, probably, because Tony had built him and Tony was a genius so in theory Jarvis was capable of anything, but one blood sample wasn’t worth freaking out over.

On the other hand it still involved stabbing himself with something unpleasantly pointy.

In theory, he could get someone else to do it for him, someone like Bruce who’d been doing it for years, or Clint or Natasha who would know how to do it for creepy spy stuff, and even Steve might have had field experience and at least the use of both hands and super-solider coordination.

Except that Steve was still at SHIELD dealing with the paperwork resulting from their kidnapping, Clint and Natasha were on some SHIELD mission, and Bruce was doctoring at a public clinic that didn’t ask too many questions like _do you actually have a medical degree_ , so none of them were even here.

And besides, he definitely needed to avoid telling Bruce why he needed a blood sample, the Hulk really shouldn’t know that yesterday Loki had technically beat the shit out of Tony, tied him up, and fucked him into the floor until he couldn’t walk. The fact that he’d loved every second probably wouldn’t get through to the big guy, along with little concepts like _consent_ and _role-play_.

 _Rape_ , on the other hand, would stick out like sixty-foot neon letters, and given that it had been hard enough convincing Steve and Thor that they’d been faking it, the Hulk would be unstoppable and would smash all the way to Asgard.

 _So get this over with quickly, before he comes back for something_.

He stuck the needle in a vein in his elbow, likely not how it was meant to be done, but how hard could it be? The syringe was automatic anyway, one of Stark Industries’ latest branching-out efforts, who needed cleansing swabs and pressure cuffs and a trained nurse? And this was far from the least responsible thing he’d ever done, really, the entire Iron Man testing phase could have killed him loads of times, the worst thing he could do to himself here was putting a tiny little hole in the wrong place.

He pulled the syringe back, filled with thick dark red blood, and possibly something else, _anything_ could be in there, evil little magical viruses or something.

He detached the needle, threw it in the incinerator, and pushed the vial into the centrifuge. The attached tablet beeped, happy to be presented with bio-hazardous fluid, and Tony should really stop writing personalities into his tech if they ended up like _that_.

And everything had gone fine.

Naturally, his arm chose that moment to start throbbing like Thor had just punched it.

“Owww…”

“ _Sir?_ ”

He rubbed it vigorously as if he could wipe the pain away, and it still hurt but at least this time it hurt because he was rubbing it and somehow that was easier to deal with. “Next time I want to stick anything up my ass, don’t let me.” The only reason he’d had to do this was because he’d had something else up there in the first place, except that had been fantastic. “Unless it’s Loki. Then it’s okay.”

If he ever came back, that was. He was still being locked up on Asgard for invading Earth. And given the way gods were immortal, they probably handed down centuries-long sentences without blinking, so Loki might not be freed in Tony’s entire lifetime. He might never even come back at all, he’d tried to take over this planet, why would anyone let him come here?

_Why would I?_

Fuck. Okay, fair enough, he was going to have a serious think about this now, otherwise it would bother him for weeks, because he’d slept around, he’d slept with people just so he could _say_ he’d slept with them, he’d made checklists of names and everything, but enjoying fucking a would-be conqueror was something else requiring some mental gymnastics.

So yesterday he’d fucked the guy that had invaded the planet and destroyed half of New York. True, he had been concussed at the time, _and_ dying, and Loki had saved his life via the sex, but none of that was true anymore, and the memories were still amazing, his cold touch and the taste of his hair and his lips on Tony’s palm. He wanted Loki back, wanted to hold the guy who’d stabbed Coulson and killed who knew how many others, the guy who’d mind-slaved Clint into turning against his friends.

The guy who’d thrown Tony out of his own window.

_Loki tried to kill me, and I kissed his hand because I couldn’t stand seeing him just leave._

The only way Tony came out looking remotely sane was if somehow Loki hadn’t tried to kill him after all.

Loki had told Natasha that Clint had told him _everything_ , but how much of everything was everything? Could Clint have known that Tony had a suit that would attach itself to him? SHIELD certainly could have, sneaky bastards, and if Clint was meant to work with Tony on the Avengers, he might have been briefed on all of the Iron Man armor’s capabilities, and if Clint had passed that on to Loki, Loki would have known that Tony wouldn’t have died. 

How long had Loki been at his tower before Tony had shown up? The Tesseract had already been established in a pretty complex set-up, so he hadn’t just arrived that minute, had Jarvis spoken to him, warned him that Tony would have protection?

Or had Loki just outright tried to kill him? He’d certainly tried to mind-slave him with the scepter, and only the fact that the arc reactor had got in his way had stopped him, which was a terrifying thought because Tony could have killed anyone under Loki’s control. Steve, Clint, Natasha, maybe Thor with a little effort and luck, and hundreds, even thousands, of civilians. That wasn’t even counting the inherent wrongness of the mind-slaving in the first place, because Loki could have stolen everything Tony was.

But he hadn’t.

But he could have.

Yeah, actually, he could have done loads of things that he hadn’t; for one thing, he could have done a hell of a lot worse to the helicarrier. The first explosive arrow hadn’t destroyed the engine, just damaged it, it had been mostly intact and repaired fairly easily, even if it had crunched Tony in the process. Why hadn’t their jet flown around a little bit more, and taken it out properly? Why hadn’t Clint shot the other engines, too? Sure, he’d shut down a second one, but it would have been easy enough to take out all three remaining engines, because SHIELD’s computer security was atrocious and they were all interlinked, and that meant it would actually have needed a _simpler_ virus to take down all the engines, so why had Loki had Clint put extra effort into taking out just one?

_Maybe Loki wanted us to survive._

Except why the hell would he want that? Why would he make his own invasion harder on himself?

He wasn’t like Thor, he hadn’t needed to win honorably, he’d just wanted to _win._

Unless he hadn’t, because he sure hadn’t _acted_ like he’d wanted to win. Maybe he’d wanted something else all along, yeah, great, something else like what, getting dragged back to Asgard and tortured inventively for the whole invasion thing in the first place? What had Loki got out of this?

Or maybe Bruce was right, and Loki really was just crazy, but he hadn’t felt crazy, not sitting by Tony’s bed in SHIELD medical just this morning, asking him _what if it had been too late?_ And when Tony had told him _it’s never too late_ , Loki had held his hand just a bit tighter. He hadn’t seemed crazy when he’d said _I am sorry I hurt you_. No, there was something there, but fuck if he knew what it actually was.

So Loki had tried to conquer Earth, killed loads of people in the process and tried, probably, to kill Tony, but for all that he hadn’t wanted, probably, to actually _succeed_.

And anyway, it wasn’t like they’d just _let_ him do all of his evil deeds; Loki had stabbed Coulson and in return Coulson had blasted him through a wall, Loki had thrown Tony out of a window and Tony had shot him in the face with his repulsors, which even a god couldn’t shrug off like it was nothing. Maybe Loki had opened war against them, but they’d fought back, hard, and they’d _beat_ him, Hulk had left him smashed into the dust and they’d sent him back to Asgard in chains. For all Loki had done to them, they’d given as good as they’d got.

Which made it all the more surprising that Loki had helped him, had saved him, had touched him so gently, when he’d could, because they had been faking _rape_ , after all, but even then Loki could have killed him without even trying. He hadn’t.

So maybe it did work out okay, maybe they could be considered to have come out even at the end of the invasion, maybe wanting to keep fucking the guy who’d attacked his planet wasn’t so bad when Tony - and his buddies - had shot him, multiple times, with some of the most powerful weapons in existence.

And Tony missed him.

Tony missed those fingers on his skin, missed Loki’s lips on his, missed Loki’s cock filling him and splitting him and feeling just so damn good, and cold, everything about Loki was cold, and Tony had loved it.

Cold. Huh.

Maybe he would go find himself some cold.

_~_

Thor pushed hard at the doors, and they swung wide slowly. He strode through the gap and across the hall, footsteps ringing out.

“Father, what is going on?”

Father raised his head from the book he was studying, spread open on his lap. “You have returned.”

“Yes, we have, and directly upon our return, Loki was arrested! What is the meaning of this?”

The book snapped shut. Father glared down at Thor, his eye stern. “The meaning of this is that he has broken my trust for the last time. I trusted that he had learned, and going to Midgard with you would merely further that lesson. I trusted that he could use his magic wisely. He abused these privileges to commit foul acts of depravity and torture.”

_The rape of the mortal, Tony Stark._

“No! No, Father, it was not! It was a stratagem to deceive and distract our captors while they planned an escape. It was that act that led to my own freedom!”

The tension in Father’s face bled away, but the lines did not disappear. They simply shifted, until he looked almost as sad and tired as he had on the day he had exiled Thor. “My son…” He stood, setting the book aside, and descended the dais to where Thor stood. “Thor, do you hear yourself? Do not explain this away. Loki does not deserve your protection.”

After what Thor had already done to him, Loki deserved nothing less. After vowing to kill him and choking him until he could not speak, there was nothing else Thor could do and still call himself Loki’s brother. “I am not explaining it away, I am trying to tell you the _truth_. Their union was consensual and for all our sakes. Loki’s magic kept Tony Stark alive.” Stark himself had told Thor so. It had taken all Stark’s unbroken spirit and honesty to convince Thor of what he should have known all along. Stark was not here to do the same again before Father. It was left to Thor.

 _Loki needs me_.

“How can you think Loki capable of such a thing?”

“He invaded Midgard, a world under your protection, and struck down Jotunheim before that. I think him capable of much.”

There was nothing but conviction in Father’s voice. Was it truly so easy to believe there was nothing good in Loki?

Yes, of course it was. Thor himself had accepted it completely. Had lost his faith and believed his eyes and his ears, and not listened to his heart telling him it was all a lie. He had not heard in himself the slightest doubt. It had horrified and repelled him, but he had not questioned it once.

But for Father to do the same was another thing entirely. It was far worse for Loki’s father and king to judge him guilty. Especially when he was _not_.

“Father, you must listen!”

“No, Thor. It is you who are wrong here. It is you who must listen to me. Loki took advantage of a powerless and dying man, attacked him brutally and without mercy.”

 _No._ No, no, he had not. Thor knew it. Stark himself had told him it was all an act. His shouts and Loki’s taunts had all been pretended. Why could Father not see that? Why would he not even entertain the thought? 

“Do not attempt to defend him, Thor. Loki is not worthy of your friendship.”

“He is my brother, my friendship is the least of what I owe him! Why will you not listen to me?”

Father sighed, and his head bowed as if pinned under some terrible weight. “I feared this.”

“Feared what?”

“My son, Loki has bespelled you.”

_What?_

“It is the only explanation for why you would continue to support him. I know you saw what he did to Tony Stark, and you have not only forgiven him, but turned your attitude completely. You broke your sworn oath to see him punished. Why would you do such things?”

“Because I was wrong! And you are wrong, too.” How could he not see that? How could he think himself so perfect? He had been wrong about Thor, monumentally wrong. Why should he not have misjudged Loki likewise?

“Thor.” Father reached out, and took him by the shoulders as if he were still a small boy needing comfort. “I was lenient in Loki’s punishment for invading Midgard. I listened to you and did not even sentence him for attacking you in your exile. And see what has come of it. I cannot chance to give him such kindness a second time.”

“Father, please, listen. I give you my word that I am under no spell!”

Father shook his head, and Thor’s stomach seemed to turn to stone. If Father was ignoring his sworn word, he would not hear anything Thor had to say. There was nothing Thor could to do help Loki now. Not when giving his word had failed to gain any ground.

“Never give your word when you are not absolutely sure you can keep it. I am sure you think yourself free, my son. But you are not. I ask that you trust me in this. I shall find a way to free you from his control, and he shall be punished for working magic on you as well as for his attack on the mortal.”

No, no, not another offense that Loki had never committed. He could not be declared guilty for that, too!

But if Father was so convinced that Thor was spelled, he would not listen. Indeed, the harder Thor argued now, the stronger Father would think the magic, and punish Loki more. Thor had to leave before he made it any worse.

He bowed shortly in farewell.

“Oh, Thor?”

What else could Father demand of him? “Father?”

“Do not involve your mother in this. She has been hurt enough already by Loki’s treachery.”

 _Hurt enough_ , indeed. Mother would take Loki’s side, and Father knew it. Father feared her opposition, hers and Thor’s combined. But Thor could not disobey a direct command. He nodded, in lieu of a second bow, and walked away.

What was he to do now? This was not a problem he could solve with Mjolnir’s aid, but he had tried Loki’s path of smooth words, and that too was closed to him. Mother’s assistance had been prevented before it could even begin. But he could not lose Loki now, not after everything else they had survived. Thor had been exiled, Loki had fallen from the Bifrost, and they had fought as enemies on Midgard, but they were brothers still. They would not fall before something so petty as a misunderstanding!

Thor required another strategy. There had to be a third option, and he had to find it. And it had to be the _right_ option; Thor would not have another chance if he failed again. And failure was something neither Loki nor Thor could afford. The price of one misstep could be the difference between Loki’s freedom and whatever dread sentence Father would impose. It would not cost Loki’s life, surely; as much as Father had surprised him today, Thor could not believe he would execute Loki for this. He could not. But there were plenty of other penalties, and Thor could not let those befall Loki either.

_Think, you great fool, think!_

It almost choked him; the voice was Loki’s. Loki would know what to do, but Thor had never had Loki’s quickness of mind. His strengths did not serve him here.

_What can I do?_

But even if he found another plan, what were the chances that he would be able to carry it through? Saving Loki was all very well, but saving him from his king bordered on treason. Certainly, Thor had the ability to seize Loki and carry him far from Asgard, but the cost of such an action might well be both their deaths, and Loki’s at the very least, if Father pursued them. And why would he not?

Father would not listen to his pleas, and anything more desperate was impossible.

_Curse Father’s blindness!_

~

“Tony?”

“Yeah, Steve?”

“Why are you in a freezer?”

Technically it wasn’t a freezer, it was a refrigerated storage chamber. “Thinking.”

“About what?”

Cold hands on his chest, cold cock in his mouth, in his ass, cold arm around his back holding him up when he could hardly stand, Loki, Loki, Loki, _Loki…_

_Cold._

“Antarctica,” he lied. “I thought approximating the conditions might help. We should build a facility down there, for stuff that needs cold conditions, it would probably be cheaper to build a new facility than keep refrigerating these ones. We can offer it to all the really antisocial guys who don’t have families, and I know I hire a lot of those. Plus the land’s really cheap because it’s actually ice and nobody wants it anyway.”

“Okay,” Steve said, gullible as ever, as if Tony would think about where to build new facilities, he had whole departments to do that for him, not that they were ever any good. “Well, if you can distract yourself from Antarctica for a few minutes, I thought you might want SHIELD’s preliminary report on our captivity.”

“Oh, good.” Tony staggered to his feet, numb and kind of squishy inside his shoes, joints aching, and maybe this was taking remembrance a little too far. Besides, no way was he asking Capsicle to come _inside_ the freezer because there was teasing and then there was absolute right-out not okay.

He pulled his sleeve over his hand to push the door open without losing any skin. Steve flinched a little as the cold air hit him, but that could be just because he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and light pants. Or it could be a pretty understandable aversion to cold.

Tony hadn’t realized before Loki had touched him just how much he _loved_ cold. Or maybe it went the opposite way, and it was just all about Loki.

Probably easier to explain a temperature kink than an invading-alien-god kink.

Especially when he was lying through his teeth about both of them anyway, because _Antarctica_. His own private Antarctica.

Tony shut the door. “Jarvis, nobody uses this storage except me.”

“ _Certainly, sir. Would you like me to write your name on it so everybody knows it’s yours?_ ”

“Knock yourself out, buddy.” He turned back to Steve, and nodded at the manila folder in his hands. “Report?”

“Yeah. I figure you won’t read the whole thing anyway, so here’s what it boils down to. They were aliens.”

Aliens. Great. So he’d been kind of right, in their cell, hypothesizing that their magic use meant they weren’t human. Being right actually didn’t make it that much better that he’d been _abducted_ by _aliens_. “Oh, God, did they probe us? Please tell me they didn’t probe us.” Not that he’d had any objection to Loki’s cock being shoved up his ass. That probably counted as an alien probe.

Best kind of alien probe ever.

“Don’t think so. SHIELD found data suggesting they were a research outpost, looking into humanity as a species, but they’d only just been set up, which is why they hadn’t been found before. All their information was just preliminary observation, and some stuff about your arc reactor.”

Tony reached up and tapped it, still there, and those aliens could suck it because they’d stolen it and it hadn’t even mattered, Loki had saved him and Steve had brought it back, and no matter how advanced they were, they wouldn’t have understood anything about it anyway. _Research outpost_ , hah. “You know, they got pretty unlucky if they were trying to learn about humans. Out of you, me, Thor, and Loki, two of us aren’t even human, and the two who actually _are_ have been seriously upgraded. Arc reactors and…” muscles the size of watermelons, “you… aren’t exactly standard issue.”

“SHIELD doesn’t think they were very smart either. They have camera footage from the outpost, and they seemed pretty… distracted by you and Loki.”

“That was the idea.” Well, that had started out as the idea. It had pretty quickly become less about keeping their captors interested and more about _oh god yes, more, more, harder, more, Loki!_

“Yeah.”

“What _did_ they do to my arc reactor?” Because he was still wearing it but it would be nice to know if it was doing something like, oh, say, slowly poisoning him.

Steve flipped through the file. “They worked out that it was a power source, so they hooked it up to the electricity. The shaking we felt, that long earthquake, that was the arc reactor overloading their systems.”

“Oh, that’s good to know.” Frankly, he hadn’t cared much about that part, not when there were other explanations for the world moving.

“SHIELD’s doing autopsies now, trying to learn as much about them as they can. Which is kind of ironic.”

“Sounds good,” even if that wasn’t technically ironic. “I can’t believe we managed to get _abducted_ by _aliens_. I will _never_ live this down if anybody hears about it.”

“Don’t worry.” Steve snapped the folder shut and held it up. There was a completely unsubtle _Classified_ stamped across the front in red ink. “We’re the only ones outside of SHIELD who know anything, apart from Loki and Thor, of course. Although there is one person you owe an explanation to.”

“Oh, shit.”

Yeah.

_Pepper._


	3. Misplaced

Loki needed to sleep.

He had not slept since before they had left for Midgard, unless he counted the black spell that had been thrown over him to permit his imprisonment there. Even if he did take that for sleep, it had still been over an entire day since then, a day of using his magic beyond its stretched limits, Thor’s hand on his throat pinning him to the wall, Odin’s judgment replacing Thor’s.

Odin’s judgment. Yes, he needed to sleep, needed to make sure he had the strength to survive whatever trial Odin staged this time. He would not show weakness, none. He could not falter, could not sway, could not twitch, he had to stand tall and motionless as if none of it meant anything.

He could not show fear.

Well. He could. He could fall to his knees and beg, and it would make no difference. Odin would show him no sympathy.

That was exactly why he needed to prove that he did not care. That Odin meant as little to Loki as Loki meant to Odin.

But he would not sleep. Could not, likely, not chained and gagged like this, not with the metal cutting into his wrists and jaw.

He had not worn them so long, the first time. Thor had ripped the gag free the moment they had returned to Asgard, and had torn away the manacles in the next instant. Sentiment, but Loki had been grateful for it. He had still been a prisoner, still sentenced, still watched, but he had been able to pretend, to even forget. Not so now, not with the sounds of the chains rattling every time he moved, not with his jaw locked shut and acrid metal between his teeth.

Odin would not let him forget this time. He wanted Loki to know he was a prisoner, a criminal, evil, wanted to mark it into his flesh. Odin wanted Loki to _be_ a prisoner.

Very well. Then he would. He had to give Odin what he wanted, had to make Odin think he had broken Loki.

Odin would become complacent, would forget how dangerous and clever Loki could be. And then he could escape.

Yes, he had to get away. The Chitauri would come for him, and stop at nothing to punish him for his failure. They would kill everyone in their path.

_Thor._

Loki had to leave Asgard before that happened. Thor would try his very best to die for him. Whatever it took, Loki would not let that happen.

Waiting would be easy. It was not as if he could do anything else. His magic was bound by more than chains, and to be silenced like this stole his other strengths from him. It was as well that acquiescence worked to his advantage, for he had no choice in it.

The stone floor was beginning to wear into his knees, hard and unresisting. It was his bone that was giving way, shaping itself flat to ease the pressure. Yes, he would adjust himself to this, too, he would let himself fall down where they wanted him. Kneeling in his cell was practice, perhaps. Another trial, and making himself appear weak and defeated; there would be a great deal of kneeling in his future.

Kneeling and waiting. It was not much of a price.

It would have been even less without this rape business. Loki had been treated well enough between first coming back to Asgard and visiting Midgard yesterday. No chains, no gag, lodged in his own chambers. Practically ignored, except when Thor came to him. It had almost been as if nothing had ever happened; it would have been easy enough to spend years in that state, until Odin weakened.

But if he had not gone to Midgard, if he were not now imprisoned, he would never have known Stark.

_Stark._

The name curled into his chest and lodged there, warm and secure and solid.

_Stark._

Yes, Stark, heat and light and that heart, oh, Stark’s heart. Loki had almost touched it. The metal cavity in Stark’s chest had led Loki’s hand down, down, down, until Stark’s heart had hung a finger’s width away. Loki held up his fingers now, chains clinking with the motion, and replicated that distance. Hand to heart. So small. So close.

And yet, he had not touched Stark’s heart. He had not needed to touch Stark’s heart to possess it. His hand dropped like a stone, the weight of the chains dragging it back down.

Stark had kissed that hand when Loki had stood to leave this morning. After all Loki had done to him, after Loki had cut Stark’s chest open with his nails, had slammed him to the wall and floor, had fucked him almost dry. The fact that it had been for the sake of their escape changed nothing. Loki’s reluctance to treat him so, his desire to worship that body on silken sheets, would not have eased Stark’s pain. And yet.

_I am sorry I hurt you._

_I’m still alive. I’m not._

But he had spoken with a smile that said the bare words were a jest, that he was more than _not sorry_ , that he had enjoyed it despite the harm and the pretense of hatred.

Loki wanted to wait with Stark by his side, find comfort in that warm skin, feel Stark’s hands over his body, learn everything that Stark’s mind held.

But he did not have Stark.

He had Thor. Thor was… not Stark. But that was no bad thing, when Thor was Thor. Thor was his brother, blood be damned.

Yes, Loki’s blood indeed was damned.

He could be glad that Thor did not share his blood. For Thor to be a Jotun would break some balance in the universe. It would break Thor, certainly; a being so lovely, so gold and strong and good, could not exist as a thing like Loki.

Blood be _damned._ What was blood when they had spent a thousand years in each other’s company? What did Loki have in common with the rest of Laufey’s get? Did he even have brothers by blood?

_Like as not, I killed them. When we first went to Jotunheim, or when I opened the Bifrost, or perhaps they came to Asgard with Laufey. How was I to know?_

Yet he would recognize Thor across eras and universes, would feel the presence of one he knew far better than he knew himself.

Thor over blood. Odin over blood, too. He had already chosen Asgard over Jotunheim. When he had learned the truth. Two fathers.

He had made his choice, and it had been easy. Laufey had abandoned him to die; Odin had raised him as his own for a millennium. He had killed the one to please the other. He had chosen Odin.

And then Odin had rejected his gift, rejected Loki, and who, _what_ , was Loki to deny the wishes of the Allfather? Odin did not want him, that had been clear enough on the Bifrost, and clearer still now.

Clear when Odin would believe this so utterly, without even Thor’s excuse of seeing the act with his own eyes. Odin would not think any son of his capable of such things.

Well. Loki would not play the good son, then. He would wait this out, and leave.

Yes, leaving would solve everything. Away from Odin, away from _not good enough_ , from _always second best_ , from _still unloved_.

And away from Thor. Away from _you are my brother still_ , from _I have always needed you_ , from _mine, yours_. It would hurt, to part himself from Thor, but it had to be done. When the Chitauri did come for him, he wanted them well away from Thor.

And yet… supposing the Chitauri did not find him so soon. Supposing the Midgardian weapon had decimated them so utterly that they would have to rebuild their forces before even looking for Loki. Supposing that took so long that they wasted away before they were strong enough to set out. Loki and Thor were immortals; the Chitauri were not. If Loki planned to wait _Odin_ out, he could certainly wait for those scum to die.

He had eternities. They would fade, and he would not even need to risk his hand.

_But there are other mortals._

_Stark._

No, Stark did not have eternities. Stark would likely die before the Chitauri, and that was a risk Loki would not take. He would not sit, patient and composed, claim his prize at the end, and then find Stark had perished along with his enemies. No, he _wanted_ Stark, wanted to learn about the science that made him shine, about how to let go of power. He wanted those hands pushing heat into his flesh, that heat around him, in him.

He shuddered, and arched his back into a touch that was not there. Stark behind him, skin on skin, Stark pushing up through his body, higher and hotter, as if he could thaw Loki’s Jotun heart. And perhaps he could.

But Loki would never know if he waited. No, he had to go now.

If Odin would exile him to Midgard, it would solve everything. Loki would have Stark; Thor could come there, safe from the Chitauri. After what the humans had done to them, even if they had the courage to return they would only be defeated once more.

Of course, the humans would say the same thing about Loki _._ If Odin cast him out as a mortal, they would likely execute him on the spot.

Why was nothing ever easy?

_Because there is nothing I can do._

What was the point in planning like this? His life was entirely in the hands of others, and there was not one thing he could do to change that. All the choices were Odin’s, not Loki’s. Why did he cause himself sorrow by thinking of Stark? It was entirely in Odin’s power whether Loki saw him again or not. Why should he think about things he could not control whatsoever?

_Thor might help._

But he could not ask that. Could not ask Thor to turn traitor along with him. Thor loved Odin, and Odin Thor, and for Loki to even touch that love would be to tear Thor away from him forever.

Even Stark was not worth that. Even Stark, even touch and heart and brilliance. Not when forever really was forever.

He _needed_ Thor. Even if it cost him Stark.

Because Loki only knew one thing about himself for truth: he was Thor’s brother.

And if Thor died, or broke that bond, what was Loki then?

~

So maybe the lab wasn’t the best place to tell Pepper what had happened but there was no way he could handle this somewhere else, he was not going to Pepper’s office to play responsible adults or telling her somewhere public where he had to hold himself together in case one of the others came in and he had to pretend he was normal. No, Tony needed his lab, needed somewhere he could quietly, or loudly, possibly very, very loudly, go to pieces.

Because telling Pepper _oh hey, I got kidnapped by aliens and fucked a god_ wasn’t really going to go well, no matter how hard he tried. But he had to try, because Pepper was worth it, because she was owed no less than the truth from him, especially since he wasn’t actually dying this time.

_It could be worse_. Yeah, it could have been a _lot_ worse, he could actually have _cheated_ on Pepper with Loki, and that would have been a whole new dimension of fucked-up. It could have been worse, but that didn’t technically make it any better. He’d still gotten abducted, again, even if it was only for a day this time, and he’d screwed the guy who’d trashed half of Manhattan, including their house, and Pepper would not be very happy about that.

But she’d be less happy if he tried to keep this from her, although he didn’t even know _if_ he could keep this from her, how much had SHIELD already told her? When had they noticed Tony and Steve and Thor and Loki had disappeared? Had they kept a nice secure classified lock on the information, or told his next of kin like minimally decent human beings would do?

_I hate SHIELD. I really hate the dickwads_.

Well, no, if he really hated them he would have blown them out of the sky by now. It actually wasn’t all of SHIELD that were complete assholes, because Hill had seemed relatively competent, and refreshingly unfazed by his bullshitting, and the Galaga guy at least had a sense of priorities, and somebody attached to the lab he and Bruce had worked in made coffee that was really something. Plus Totally-Not-Phil Coulson was still technically with SHIELD, and Natasha and Clint. So really it was just the part of SHIELD that had shot a nuke at his head, and Fury, obviously, who he had the problems with. The people who directed, controlled, aimed, and owned SHIELD, and when he put it like that it really made no sense that he hadn’t at least got rid of _them_.

But they weren’t his concern right now, Pepper was, Pepper who’d saved his life too many times to count through often-ignored things like food and water and making him sleep, Pepper who was the only human being who was capable of putting up with him for extended periods of time. Pepper his best and oldest friend, and when he was really shitty, his only friend. And she was going to be down here in a couple of minutes, and even Jarvis couldn’t hack him a new door into SHIELD’s servers in that length of time. He’d just have to ask her what she knew and fill in the gaps from there.

_Hey, Pep, how much have you been told about me getting kidnapped off the street and screwing an alien while plotting to escape?_

Yep. It was official.

He was going down.

_What? You were kidnapped? Again? Why didn’t I know about this?_

She was going to _freak_.

But maybe she wouldn’t care so much about the Loki thing, it wasn’t as though Tony was in a relationship with her, and she’d never really cared about him sleeping around before as long as it didn’t backlash against the company, and even then it was okay as long as the stocks weren’t affected. With SHIELD’s _Classified_ sticker on everything, and Loki himself half a universe away, this particular time was about as discreet as possible. Maybe he wouldn’t even need to mention it.

Except that he’d kept things from her before and learned his lesson, she was worth trusting, with everything, and who else would sit there and listen to him complain about not getting to keep Loki?

“Tony?”

Here he went.

“Oh my god, Tony, what happened? Are you okay?”

He turned to see her. Shaking, pale, strung-out like she hadn’t slept, and the way her voice was high and trembly - she knew.

“Pep, it’s alright, I’m fine, I’m okay, we’re all okay.” He reached out and crossed the lab to her, dodging tables, and there were way too many tables in here, he would have to do something about that.

“We’re all? We’re all, how many of you were there?”

He held her close, and she was almost too tense to be held, like she was about to vibrate right out of his arms, but that was exactly why he needed to hold her, needed to try and rub the stress out of her shoulders. “It’s okay, it was me and Steve and Thor, and Loki-”

“Loki? Loki the crazy invader, Loki who tried to kill you?”

“Yeah, but to be fair, I tried to kill _him_ , and,” and they’d fucked, and he hadn’t actually said that, why hadn’t he said that, he needed to tell her! It wasn’t like keeping that back was going to make it any easier to say later.

“And we-”

Pepper broke away from him, staggering on her stilettos, and she was really hit by this if she couldn’t walk on them properly. She was crying, long shiny streaks down both cheeks, and she reached up and wiped them away, fingers fluttering, mascara smearing.

Pepper was crying.

This was very bad, very, very bad, because Pepper never cried unless she was _really_ upset, and it wasn’t as if he’d even been hurt at all, apart from a couple of bruises and the minor concussion and he hadn’t even told her about that, and he’d done way worse to himself in the lab, so there was no reason she should be so unbalanced by _this_.

She shook her head, and her lips worked silently, and they were almost as white as her skin, like she was about to pass out or something, but she couldn’t because her blood pressure was so high he could see her pulse along her neck, absolutely racing. “I can’t - it’s too much. I was terrified, scared out of my mind, I couldn’t even think until I heard you were okay, and even then I was just imagining what could have happened, over and over, worse and worse and it’s been _hours_ , all night, why didn’t you _call_ -”

Tony stopped her before he could start crying too, because that never ended well. “God, I’m sorry,” he whispered, reaching out to hold her again because she really was about to fall over, and this was way worse than he’d considered, this was actually _hurting_ her.

Every damn time something went right for him, something worse happened, and this was Pepper, worse things weren’t allowed to happen to her, not if he could stop them. And he could. If it brought her to tears and petrified her, there was no way he was going to let that go on. “I’ll stop. I quit. The Avengers, everything, I’m not doing it if it does this to you.”

“No!” She pulled away and stared up at him, eyes wide and shocked, and he felt like he’d just been punched in the guts. “No, Tony! You can’t. You have to do this, this is what you were… _meant_ to do. You saved all of New York, you can’t just - I couldn’t bear it if you stopped because of me. I’m not worth the world, Tony.”

“You _are_ , hell yes you are-” but Pepper was wearing her sad smile and that was it, it was all over, there was no arguing with Pepper’s sad smile, she knew exactly what was happening here and, fuck it, so did he, and what else had he expected, really?

“Tony. I’m really not. If you’d never joined the Avengers, New York wouldn’t be here right now. I probably wouldn’t be either. Iron Man saved me but… he scares me too. You need to be Iron Man, and if that doesn’t work for me, then that’s my problem. I have to go.”

“Go? Go where, go as in you have a meeting or something or go as in _go_ , as in _leaving_ , leaving me?” He had to ask, just had to, sad smile or not, because maybe there was still a chance, maybe it could still be okay, but he’d never know if he didn’t ask, how could she leave the tower, leave everything they’d worked on together? “Pepper, just tell me what you want.”

She sighed, and dropped her head, and her hair tumbled over her shoulder, messy and tangled from spending almost twenty-four hours in panic. “I want to not have a heart attack every time you do your job. I want to not be in mortal terror every other day.” She looked up again, and her eyes were swimming with tears that she was somehow holding back, because that was how Pepper did things. “I want normal. I’m not an Avenger, I can’t handle this. It was bad enough when it was just you, that horrible mess with Obadiah and then Vanko, but now… it’s like having six of _you_ , you get into more trouble and danger than I could ever have imagined, and I wish I didn’t have to imagine it but I do. I want to be in a place where I don’t hear that you’ve just disappeared _again_. I don’t want to spend my lunch break wondering if SHIELD is going to call me and tell me…”

And he’d offered to _fix_ that, offered to make all of that go away, kick SHIELD out the door and hang up the suit and just be normal for once like she wanted, why couldn’t he solve the problem, why did she have to make the difference on her end?

“I shouldn’t miss my best friend’s dying words because my phone’s on silent!”

“How about missing them because you’re at the other end of the country? How is that any different?”

Pepper coughed, and sniffed hard, and how could she still look so beautiful even when she was tearing herself apart?

Fuck it, _he_ was tearing her apart.

God, what had he done to her?

“Because maybe if I go, I can forget. Just a little bit. Just pretend like maybe you’re not about to get yourself killed. And maybe eventually I won’t care like this, I won’t feel like I’m bleeding every second.”

“And you won’t have to if you go. Okay.” Okay, yeah, Pepper could go, because it wasn’t like anyone ever did anything differently, it wasn’t like anyone ever stayed with him. Howard had died and Rhodey had ditched now that he had his own suit and Stark Industries didn’t have a weapons contract and didn’t need a military liaison and Loki had gone back to Asgard, god knew why, all they wanted to do to him was lock him up and maybe throw in some torture, whereas Tony would have screwed him every night and probably a good fraction of the days too and learned about magic and taught Loki about science and maybe actually been happy for once. Pepper wanted normal, yeah, so what else should she do but follow the pattern?

“I’m sorry-”

“Don’t. Don’t be sorry. It’s what you have to do.” It wasn’t like he would never see her again, after all, she still ran his company, they would have to at least call each other to talk about that, maybe, because Pepper would probably do such a good job that he wouldn’t need to tell her to change anything and it wasn’t as if she would ever need something from him anyway. “Sort it out with Jarvis, and I’ll back anything you do.”

“Tony-”

“No, I get it.” He was moving, he hadn’t even noticed himself start walking but she was way over there by now and he was almost at the door, and yes, his subconscious had the right idea, out was good. “It’s fine. Stay safe.” That had probably crossed a line, given that half of her reason had been that he kept her safe, or technically that Iron Man kept her safe, and he’d never hated the suit, not once, not ever, until this moment, because it just wasn’t fair that the best thing in his life drove away the only thing that might have been even better.

He ducked through the door and ran up the stairs, three at a time, legs burning but not as much as the spot he could feel in his back where her eyes had to be staring, if he hadn’t reduced her to outright sobbing. His eyes were stinging too, harsh and salty and damp, and damn it, if there was anything in his life worth crying over it was this. He’d never thought he’d lose Pepper, god, he’d really taken her for granted, hadn’t he, assumed that he’d get killed in some firefight somewhere - or carrying a nuke - and she’d have been with him every step of the way.

Except it had turned out she just wasn’t strong enough to handle all his shit.

To be utterly, utterly fair, he had an awful lot of shit, it wasn’t like he should expect any relatively normal human to be able to take it.

_Good thing Loki’s not human, then._

Yeah, like that was going to happen. Like he was ever going to get Loki back. But if he did, _if he did_ , a thousand-year-old god would probably be pretty unimpressed by anything Tony could throw at him.

_Hey, I got kidnapped again_.

_Lovely to hear it. Pass me the remote while you’re up._

Oh, Christ, he was imagining little domestic situations now. _Pass me the remote_ , what, did he want to lounge around watching bad TV with Loki?

What a waste of time they could spend fucking.

Of course, this right now was also a massive waste of time, with Loki dumped back on Asgard with who-knew-what happening to him, and Tony stuck on Earth and really in the mood for a pity-fuck, because _Pepper_. Because Pepper had walked out, because he was just too much for her to take, because he really wasn’t worth any actual human’s time.

Yep, he was knee-deep in self-pity right now. He could really use Loki, could really use cold fingers tight on his shoulders, cold legs wrapped around his waist, cold lips on his.

Damn, this cold kink was quite something.

But Loki wasn’t here for that. The best Tony had was that freezer.

He should never have left it in the first place. Leaving had involved getting that report from Steve and finding out he’d been abducted by aliens and being told to talk to Pepper.

Great idea, and he wasn’t hiding from his problems at all, he was Tony Stark, it was completely normal for him to be satisfying his slightly-dangerous kinks, it wasn’t about running away from anything.

At all.

Nope.

~

This was _unthinkable_.

How could Father do such a thing?

Thor slammed the door to his chambers shut. His elbows and knees jarred as he dropped to the ground, and buried his head under his hands. It could not be permitted, it could not stand, and yet - he had tried to fix this. He had tried and he had failed.

_No! I cannot fail Loki again!_

Thor had already let him fall from the Bifrost, from where he had somehow found and led an army to Midgard. By Loki’s account, their entire childhood had been spent with Thor failing Loki. _The shade of your greatness_ , he had said.

The past could not be changed, but this mistake could still be stopped. Thor could still do something. He had to be able to. He was Loki’s _brother_ , he was supposed to protect him, to stand beside him in all things. There had to be something he could do.

But Father would not hear him, and there was no other authority to appeal to.

Why was Thor the only one who believed Loki’s innocence?

Yet, _could_ Loki be guilty? Could he have fooled Thor? He had dashed blindly after his assumptions before, to the loss of himself and others. It wasn’t too late to stop and think about this. To stop and think, as Loki had once begged him to do, in Laufey’s hall on Jotunheim.

If Father was right, then Loki had spelled Thor into thinking him innocent. Thor, and Stark, and the captain too, for they had also accounted Loki blameless. But if Loki had, then why would he not have used that power to escape instead? If Loki was guilty, why had he allowed - nay, _told_ \- Thor to bring him back to Asgard? Furthermore, for this to be true, Loki would have to have been capable of such an act as rape, and Thor could not believe that. Nothing of Father’s idea stood to reason.

No, there was fault, but it lay elsewhere.

_It must be Heimdall or Father_.

The thought chilled him. His hands clenched into fists, digging into his skull, as though he could drive his suspicion away with force. But there was no escaping it. Loki was innocent, but Father had declared him guilty. Somewhere between those two ends, the truth had been twisted and lost. It had to be either Heimdall or Father. Heimdall, to see and hear wrongly, or Father…

Thor fought back the burning in his eyes. If Heimdall had seen true, and reported events as they had happened to Father, then Father’s judgment was not based on those events. If Father knew the truth, and chose to avoid it…

_“Why?”_

The howl echoed back to him, and the walls rang with the force of it. Why would Father do such a thing? How could a king sentence a man he knew to be innocent?

Father would not do that. No, he was wise and just. He always made the right choice. He was king, and their _father_.

It had to be Heimdall, then. An error in Heimdall’s vision or hearing. Stark had told him that he and Loki had planned their action beforehand. Heimdall must have misheard that plan, or misinterpreted it. Perhaps he had thought it was merely Loki taunting Stark with what was about to happen to him. Thor had been unable to summon Mjolnir from that place; it was likely that the same barrier had clouded Heimdall’s sight. Their captors had had powerful magic as well as Midgardian science at their disposal. Who knew what effect the combination would have?

But such an answer would satisfy no-one. Father would surely claim that such a hindrance had been caused by an ashamed Loki trying to conceal his crimes, and incomplete because his magic had not been strong enough to hide everything.

_I don’t know what to do._

Thor had tried, and Thor had failed, and there was nothing more he could do. Even if he tried again, would Father listen to him? Father had already cast aside Thor’s word, and he had not heard Loki even once.

_Loki._

Loki might have a plan. Loki might be waiting for him to come. He should have seen Loki before this. Had the guards taken the chains off yet? The gag?

Thor pounded his fists against the floor. Again he let his brother down! He had vowed to do better; he had not yet done anything of the sort. It was astonishing that Loki still called him _brother_ at all.

_Then I had best go prove myself worthy of that faith_.

If he could. 


	4. Save

Loki’s eyes flicked up as the door burst open, but with an entrance like that, loud and unnecessary, it could only be Thor. And it was. Predictable as ever.

Thor’s face went pale as their eyes met. Loki tossed his head as if he could shake off Thor’s concern.  _I’m fine_.

He was chained and gagged and hadn’t managed to raise himself from the floor yet, but he was fine.

Thor snarled. “I will thrash them  _all_.” He dropped to his knees before Loki, and seized the manacles. They fell open, and he snatched them from Loki’s wrists and hurled them aside. Thor snarled again, and reached back around Loki’s head. The lock popped, and the metal peeled loose from the indents in his skin. Thor flung the gag after the chains. His hands, hot and heavy, cupped Loki’s jaw and tried to smooth out the marks. His flesh burned, irritated, but Thor’s touch, and Thor’s comfort, were well worth a little sting.

“Loki…”

“Thank you.”

Thor tightened his grip, just a little, and bent their heads together. “I cannot believe this is happening to you.”

“Oh, I can.” It was hard to disbelieve, after all, hard to ignore the chains and the gag and the close confines of the barren cell.

“I have tried to speak to Father, but he will not  _listen_.”

“Of course not.” Odin had never listened to Loki, or to anything about Loki. He had been ignored for a thousand years; why should that have changed now? “It’s alright.”

“It is not alright! Loki, what is happening here? Father will not tell me anything, and you…”

_Good_. “I will not tell you anything either.”

“Why not?” Thor gripped both of Loki’s shoulders hard, as though he could shake sense into him. He could feel every point even through the leather, the two lines of Thor’s fingers across his back, and the hard horizontal streaks of his thumbs. He held Loki as if he would never let go.

But that was what Loki needed.

“You’re in my way, Thor.”

Thor flung his hands away and shot to his feet, seizing fistfuls of his hair, and Loki’s stomach curled. Would Loki always do this to him? Hurt him even when he did not mean to?

“Not like that. I have no complaints that you are close to me.” No, his only complaint was that Thor could not remain there. “I mean my arrest. Father’s accusation. Everything. I am dealing with it.”

“Dealing with it? You are crouched here doing nothing!”

_Exactly._

“I need you to tell me what to do! I have been to Father, and he will not hear me. He has forbidden me from talking to Mother of this!”

Oh, good. Perfect, even. Loki had disappointed her enough. Yes, she should not be roped into his latest infamy.

“There is no-one to attack, no war, no battle. You need to tell me what to do!”

If Thor treated this as a battle, he would bring it all to failure. And Thor treated  _everything_ as a battle. “Very well.” Loki pushed himself up off the floor, his knees aching as he straightened them. He strode the two steps over to Thor, and let his hands rest on either side of his neck.  _Trust me, brother_. “Stay out of this. Leave it be.”

“What? You  _want_  me to let them punish you for this? When you are innocent?”

Loki’s innocence was of no matter here, Thor’s life was. Loki had to obey Odin, had to obey him utterly, in order to regain any trust that would let him escape. Loki had to get away from Thor. Taking the offensive position here, or even a defensive position, would undermine any future hope.

The Chitauri  _would_ come for him. Loki would have to be far away from Thor when that happened.

Loki slid his hands up to cup Thor’s cheeks, felt the soft skin under the rough hair of his beard. “You ignored me on Midgard, and we both know how you regretted that. Listen to me now, and let this be. You have to let me do this my way.”

_You have to let me suffer, for both our sakes. I’m trying to save you!_

Thor’s head drooped low, and his hands flew up to rest over Loki’s. “I don’t want to let them hurt you.”

“I don’t actually want to be hurt. I just want this to be over. I want to let it happen, and let it end.” He slid his fingers apart, and reached out just a little to catch Thor’s fingers between his, and held them tight. His wrists twinged, bruised and swelling where the manacles had gripped them. “Give me your word that you will not try to stop Odin.”

“I…”

No, no, he could not hesitate, he had to promise. Loki could make this work, he could, but if Thor pushed Odin too far it could all fall apart. “Thor.”

“I swear.”

_Yes._

“I swear I will do nothing to prevent or hinder your trial.”

Loki exhaled. “Thank you. And speaking of my trial, you should go before they bring me before Odin. I doubt he would be pleased to know you had even seen me.”

Thor lowered his hands, fingers popping from between Loki’s. Loki dropped his hands too, and they ached emptily without Thor’s skin under them. He clenched them into tight fists - poor substitute, but it left his palms not quite so abyssal.

“Very well. But remember that I have not forgotten you. And I love you, Loki.”

Loki smiled. “I know.” It was why he could ruin everything. “And I you.” It was why everything was necessary in the first place.

Thor nodded, and turned to go.

Loki rolled his eyes. Leaving early to prevent anyone finding out he had been here, and yet leaving the most obvious signs. “Thor.”

He snapped around eagerly, as if Loki might have changed his mind. “Yes?”

Loki flicked a finger at the gag and the chains, abandoned in a corner of the cell. “You need to put those back.”

Thor saw them, and shuddered. “Must I?”

“You did it once. It’s not that hard.”

Thor crossed the room slowly, and picked up the gag and weighed it in his hand. “But then…”

Then Loki had been his enemy, then Loki had attacked Midgard, yes, but this was not so different. “If it makes you feel any better, I am still guilty of what you first put it on me for. I invaded your pet planet. Punish me.”

But Thor’s eyes were clouded and distant, his fingers flexing as though he wanted to destroy the thing completely. He had just given his word that he would not interfere, and yet he had to force himself to keep it. He could at least trust that Loki knew exactly what he was doing, and would not have asked for Thor’s word lightly.

Thor could not walk away from him. Loki gave him no choice, and crossed the room to where Thor stood. “Please don’t make me do it myself.”

His brother’s eyes cleared, and he raised the gag. Loki nodded, and tipped his head back, shaking his hair clear. Thor’s own lips thinned as Loki’s parted to let the metal between his teeth, still harsh and bitter. Thor settled the gag back into his skin. The edges dropped into the same grooves they had cut before, sore and stinging. No sign he had ever been free to speak. Loki would have smiled if he could have. Thor did need a push to get anything done right, but once he started he performed admirably.

The rest of this should go well, then. If Thor had accepted his role, he would play it to the hilt, and Loki would be allowed to continue unimpeded.

The ends clicked together and the gag tightened slightly, firm and immobile. Thor’s hands lingered, combing softly through Loki’s hair, unsteady in the unfamiliar length he had grown it to since falling. “I’m sorry.”

_Don’t be. You’re doing exactly what I want._ For once.

Thor picked up the chains, and Loki held out his hands. Going willingly to this; what a weak, submissive fool he must look. But it was Thor who submitted to Loki’s desires here. Thor’s free hand went to Loki’s wrist, his fingers running over the bruised band the manacle had already left. “I hate to cause you more pain.”

_Do it anyway. You promised._

Thor tried to set it higher on his arm, but it was so tight it would not close there. Slowly, Thor slid the metal back down, and it clicked shut over the marked skin, biting hard. Thor did the same with the other. His wrists ached already, and perhaps worse for the time they had been freed; his sore flesh had probably swollen further, and now was not just held, but crushed. No matter. He had no choice in it.

Thor pressed his lips to Loki’s forehead, damp and soft. Loki’s eyes drifted shut.  _Forgive me for making you do this to me._

Then Thor broke away, and he left without looking back.

Well. That could have been much worse.

It had probably been as good as he could hope for. He had Thor’s promise to let Loki fix this, and Thor would keep his word. Thor would let Loki suffer whatever Odin could come up with this time. Likely it would be worse than  _punishment until repentance_ , as he had been given for Midgard. In practice, it meant that Odin could hold him prisoner for as long as he wanted, but that was still easy compared to some of the alternatives that would be called into play now.

Public flogging, for example.

But even that, even  _that_ , was easy compared to the consequences of avoiding it.

_Thor._

Loki needed Thor. Needed Thor safe, needed Thor alive, needed Thor and the Chitauri at opposite ends of the realms.

For that, he would endure whatever Odin called down.

~ 

Jarvis was a traitor.

Tony had only been in the freezer for a couple of hours before Jarvis had ordered him out and bossed him into a hot bath until his core temperature rose to somewhere vaguely human-normal and  _yes_ , Jarvis was supposed to look after him but it wasn’t like Tony was actually going to kill himself with this kink.

Yeah, he’d said that before, and been almost wrong about it, but still.

At least he hadn’t had to see Pepper again before she’d left.

The wrench slipped from his fingers and he sighed, bowing over and leaning his forehead on the semi-repaired compression pump.  _Pepper_. How could she just have walked away like that? Did she really think that not being so physically close to Tony would make it easier for her not to worry about him?

_Screw it_. She needed what she needed, and if she wanted space, who the hell was he to deny her anything she wanted? If she really thought this would work, this stupid, hurtful, necessary plan, why shouldn’t she go through with it?

And dammit, he was about to cry again.

“Steve said you wanted to talk to us?”

Tony turned at Natasha’s voice and oh boy, Clint was with her, this was exactly what he did not need right now, and it was going to be unpleasant if they were  _both_ going at him. They broke apart as they walked deeper into his workshop like they owned it, Natasha coming up to him and Clint moving to his preferred from-a-distance position, setting up camp on one of the desks by the wall and fiddling with discarded stationery.

_Fuck you, Steve_. Maybe it wasn’t usually the case, but there had to be at least a possibility that Tony’s sex life could be something private, and after dealing with Pepper, was it really too much to ask that this whole thing could just drop?

But there was no reason to jump to the worst conclusion possible, maybe they weren’t even here about that at all, maybe SHIELD had told them already and now that the threat was resolved there was no need to bring it up again.

“Oh, hey guys!” Very casual, not at all as if he’d been abducted yesterday.  _Smooth_. “See you’re back.”

Natasha gave him a micro-expression, a tiny shift of the muscles in her cheek and oh shit, she was pissed, she wasn’t even trying to pretend she was just here to say hi, and she was so upset she was forcing herself to keep it in check, it was too much for her to let go of safely.

Tony was going to die.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened while we were away?”

“What, didn’t Steve already tell you everything?” Obviously he hadn’t, or he wouldn’t have told them to come talk to Tony, but the more bullshit he built up now, the better, because there was no way he was letting them anywhere near what this had actually meant to him.

“He gave us the bare bones, and sent us on to you.” Natasha’s eyebrow rippled a little, like it was trying to point at him.

Clint still hadn’t said anything but Tony could feel the spot where he was staring, a little hot point between his shoulderblades but, creepily, slightly to the left, so exactly where Clint would shoot him dead. He hadn’t been carrying his bow when they’d come in but that meant absolutely nothing, he’d probably built one out of the stuff on the desk he had occupied. Typical Tony, leaving lethal things lying around in his lab and then not actually setting up the lockout system he’d planned on. He lived with  _assassins_ now, he really had to take greater care of his personal safety, probably starting with giving Natasha some answers because he had no interest in actually being interrogated by her.

“While you guys were out killing people, Loki saved my life.” Perfect. Short, to the point, everything they needed to know.

“Want to unpack that a little?”

_Not really._  “Apparently we got curious-alien-abducted, you know about that part, right? Steve gave you the bare bones, and that’s pretty bare. Said curious aliens stole my arc reactor, but Loki did its job for me long enough for us to escape.”

“Then why did Steve look like you were dying when he told us to come talk to you?”

“Well, firstly, just to get this clear, I’m not dying. Thanks to Loki, by the way, I want that clear, too.”

Natasha looked distinctly unimpressed. True, that was the way she normally looked, but she didn’t generally aim it at  _him_. He turned to see Clint as well, and he probably should have done that a while ago, because who left a known, about-to-be-quite-upset, killer at their back?

Clint looked way too openly suspicious for somebody so sneaky. Tony was in a  _shitload_ of trouble if Clint wasn’t bothering to hide either. “Why would you want that clear?”

“Because he did it by fucking me.”

It should not have been possible for there to be so much silence in the room when his audio system was running. “Jarvis, kill the music.” Now it was really, awkwardly,  _painfully_ , silent, but at least reality matched up with what his head was telling him.

“Fucking you,” Natasha said.

“Yeah. He needed to touch me for the magic to work, only the guards had this thing against common decency and kept breaking us up. So we, uh, went for common indecency instead. Pretty indecent, actually, we made it look like rape.”

_Snap._

“That was a perfectly good pencil before you picked it up, Barton!” Tony crossed the lab to dispose of the corpse respectfully. Pencils had a hard life in Tony’s hands, and the last thing they deserved was snipers breaking them in half.

He caught sight of Natasha’s face as he turned and stopped dead. She was beyond angry, she was furious, eyes burning like she wanted to set him on fire with them, jaw set, red flush starting to crawl over her cheeks. She looked much like Steve and Thor had, behind the concussion-fog, when they’d thought Loki really had hurt him. “Important word here being  _look_ , guys, we only made it  _look_ like rape. The other important word being  _we_. Frankly, it was actually the best time I’ve had in months.”  _Or… ever._ Really? He’d have to think about that a bit more.

Like he needed an excuse to think about their time together, he’d done pretty much nothing else all day.

“What did you say?”

Tony rolled his eyes at her. She’d heard every word. Was it really so hard to believe? “Loki’s a thousand-year-old god, he’s not some one-dimensional villain. There’s more to him than the  _kneel before me_ crap. And part of that is that he’s great in bed. Or on the floor. The cell wasn’t exactly the Hyatt.”

Clint coughed, and Tony went over to retrieve the murdered pencil. Clint’s fake-relaxation was still intact; snapped pencil aside, he looked like he was just chilling on a table while watching Tony work. “So SHIELD’s number one enemy, who invaded the planet only a few months ago, gets imprisoned with you, and he just saves your life with sex?”

Wow, it sounded stupid when laid out like that. But that was Clint, boiling everything down to the essentials, leaving out how gentle Loki’s hands had been and the way he’d spoken of power like it scared him, like he wanted to stop and just didn’t know how. “Yeah. Admittedly, it saved him, too. He kept me alive, I came up with a plan, and that let both of us get out. Plus Steve and Thor.”

Natasha prowled up and she really had no definition of personal space because she was way too close to him right now, and it wasn’t even like he could move somewhere else because he had Clint on his other side and they weren’t about to let him get away. This was supposedly  _his_ tower still, he just let them live here, and this was  _definitely_ his workshop, and they were still using their secret spy moves on him but being trapped was at least half his fault for not keeping them both in front of him.

“And you weren’t at all concerned about that?”

“Concerned? Yeah, I was concerned, I was abducted by  _aliens_ and they stole my arc reactor, so was I  _dying_ again.”

“About  _Loki_.” Natasha’s voice cracked like a whip. “Look at yourself.”

Tony had looked. He had cuts on his chest from Loki’s nails, bruises competing for real estate all over his head, scrapes all down his back and congregating across his shoulders, skin rubbed raw around his wrists from Loki’s belt. They couldn’t even see half of it. He’d been fucked into a floor and Loki had been beating him up, so how else was he supposed to look? But that didn’t make it a bad thing, Loki had warned him and Tony had told him to go ahead and the worst stuff wasn’t even from Loki’s hands anyway, the guards’ gun applied to his head had been way more painful than those long pale fingers that had still tried their best to be kind.

“And you know he tried to kill all of us.”

“Yeah, and we tried pretty hard to kill him in return. He didn’t kill me, and believe me, he really could have. He could have torn me apart without even trying. But he didn’t, so really, this isn’t a big deal. We fucked, it was great, I’m alive, end of story."

“Kind of sounds like you trust him,” Clint said, half a question mark buried in his tone.

Tony shrugged. Trust? Loki? Not precisely, because not killing somebody didn’t really make them worthy of  _trust_. And Tony had trusted loads of people - a person, at least - that had tried to kill him. “It’s not like I gave him all our access codes or anything.”

“But you don’t think he was involved. You don’t think he set this whole thing up.”

“Set it up so that I’d have a great time? Not likely. Even my ego doesn’t think that Loki just  _had_  to have a night with me.”

Natasha’s face twitched again, just a little, just enough to make it really obvious how very much she was holding herself back. “Will you stop talking about it like this?”

“Why, you jealous? You should be, he was a  _great_ fuck.”

Natasha’s lips thinned,  _uh-oh_ -

She snarled and seized his shirt, and then the counter hit his head and  _ow_ , and damn it, was she allowed to pin him to his own bench? Apparently. “Could you possibly think about someone besides yourself for an entire minute?”

“Sure.” Clint’s face was turned sideways but he clearly still looked amused, like Natasha shoving Tony into things was better than anything on HBO. Tony struggled in her grip, pushing against the table but she wasn’t giving him an inch and his chest was getting tight and she could talk about Loki all she wanted but Tony was more afraid of her right now because she wasn’t faking how pissed she was. Tony went limp for the sake of oxygen conservation because who knew how long he’d be here?

Okay. So Natasha was pissed about the whole Loki thing, which didn’t make a lot of sense, what had he done to  _her_ to get under her skin like this, normally the only thing that rattled her was something happening to  _Clint-_

_Fuck._

“He didn’t - you two didn’t-” Why was there no good way to ask his teammate if he’d been mind-controlled into screwing the enemy?

Clint huffed a breath that could have been a laugh if it wasn’t so blatantly humorless, sharp and bitter. “No. He didn’t.”

Natasha pushed him harder into the table and his breaths went shallow, lungs half-crushed. “Couldn’t you have thought of that before you brought this whole thing up? Loki  _could_  have. So maybe you’d like to stop talking about this like it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

“Well, actually, when somebody saves my life, that  _is_ usually the highlight of my day.”

“This isn’t just about saving your life,” said Natasha, finally letting him go. He pushed himself up and rubbed at the ache where his face and the bench had been way too intimate, and sucked in a deep breath and felt his lungs expand to an alarming degree larger than they had been, ribs almost cracking as they flexed back outwards. “I know all about taking a fuck for the job. And this-” she stabbed a finger at Tony specifically and his Loki-bullshit generally “-is not just about the job. If it was, you wouldn’t be asking us if we were jealous of you because Loki’s  _such a great fuck_.”

“That word is coming up an awful lot in this conversation. And my bots are technically underage. We probably shouldn’t be talking about this, they’ll start asking awkward questions.”

Clint and Natasha both looked distinctly unappreciative of his attempt to make this go away. “Look, Stark, if you  _want_  to fuck the guy who destroyed half of Manhattan, that’s up to you. Just don’t expect us to be happy about it.”

“Yeah, because why should you be happy about the part where he saved my life? Why should I try to hold on to the only positive thing about being abducted, because oh yeah, that’s what actually happened to me! Would you rather I freak out completely over being held prisoner by I don’t even know who, I didn’t see them until Loki  _killed them_  during our  _escape_  from that hole. Sure, go be miserable that I’m actually here and not still in my cell, with Loki, incidentally, that’s totally fine by me.” He’d only woken up this morning strapped down in a SHIELD medical wing and flashed back to Afghanistan pretty vividly, and maybe for them that would have been nothing but Tony couldn’t just wave that away. What he could do was ignore the bad parts if they’d just let him.

“It’s not about-”

Yeah, of course it wasn’t about that, it was about them being completely unable to look past the whole Loki-is-evil thing, which was kind of fair, but did they need to be so in his face about it? It wasn’t like he’d been under Loki’s mind control, and even though Clint had, he didn’t seem messed up that badly, and sure Loki  _had_ done a lot of awful stuff, but so had Tony. They could just go be moral somewhere else. “Go away.”

“Tony-”

“Seriously. Get out.” He was not going to take Natasha being all calm and rational about this, or Clint pulling the  _I am proof that Loki is a scumbag_ card, and  _especially_ not Natasha pulling it for him. Tony  _got it_. Loki had hurt people, these people, but it wasn’t like Tony hadn’t done worse.  _They’d_ done worse, too, they were  _assassins_ , how did they manage to judge Loki and not explode from the hypocrisy?

Sure, Loki had killed people. They’d  _all_ killed people, even Steve and Bruce. Because Steve had fought in an actual war, for months, and Bruce counted every person harmed by the Hulk as harmed by  _him_.

Compared to some of the things they’d done, Tony screwing Loki was practically nothing. Clint had brought Natasha into SHIELD when they’d marked her for death, and that had to be crossing way more lines than just sleeping with the enemy. It wasn’t even like nobody had ever done that before.

And really, when the enemy looked like  _that_ , sharp eyes and pale skin and sleek hair and cheekbones like knives, there weren’t many people who’d turn him down, especially when he wasn’t actively doing anything evil. He’d sounded longing when they’d talked in the medical wing, like he’d really wanted to stop, just stop, and all it would have taken was Tony telling him how. But Natasha and Clint hadn’t heard him. Loki hadn’t kissed  _their_ hands. Loki hadn’t told  _them_ he was sorry with that absolute soul-clenching sincerity.

Tony looked up. The lab was empty, which meant absolutely nothing. They could very well still be here, and besides that it wasn’t impossible that they’d planted bugs he hadn’t found yet. The ones he  _had_ found could well have been decoys to make him think he’d found them all.

How was this his life? Tony Stark, Fucker of Gods, or  _a_  god, that was a good start, Landlord of Assassins, and Ambushee in His Own Lab. How had this happened?

He was ambushed in his lab because that was where he was most of the time, he’d let the others move in because the  _team_ thing had really gone to his head, and Loki had been saving his life. That was how that had happened.

Apparently  _genius billionaire playboy philanthropist_ wasn’t enough for him.

He stretched out his arms, and took another look around. They really did seem to be gone.

Good. He had work to do.

Except his breathing was still shaky and the ache from the table lingered down his face and chest and there was a vague imprint of Natasha’s hand in his back and he’d had a concussion yesterday and being slammed into a table wouldn’t have done his brain any more favors. Definitely not in the state to be waving sharp things, hot things, and sharp hot things around.

Great. They’d not only come in here and insulted him, they’d left him unable to keep working too.

Hell with it. Steve had been bugging him to spend more time out of the lab anyway.

~ 

Thor sighed, and ran his hands through his hair. It felt just as Loki’s had, before Thor had chained him again.

The thought almost pained him, made his hands ache and his stomach curl. His brother, his brave and innocent brother, had already suffered so much for this. Thor was only making it worse.

And he had sworn to take this even further. How could he have done such a thing?

He had sworn because Loki had asked him. Loki needed this from him. If Thor wanted to help, then this was how.

_I will do nothing to prevent or hinder your trial._

Trial. That thought hurt almost as much. This was no trial, this was a scripted play that belonged more on a stage than in Asgard’s halls. Father had made no effort to seek out the truth. Loki would be given no chance to speak for himself. The supposed victim was not even present to accuse his attacker!

Yet Stark, if he were here, would still make no such accusation. Stark would defend Loki from Father just as he had from Thor. Stark had stood between Thor and Loki even knowing that Thor could kill him with one blow. Stark had done that with no fear in his eyes and no doubt in his voice. Were he here, Stark would do the same again.

And that was exactly what Loki needed. Thor had tried to defend him, and had not been heard, but Father could not ignore Stark. If Stark refused to say that Loki had attacked him, how could this go forward?

But that was exactly what Thor had sworn  _not_ to do. Loki wanted this to go forward.

Then it would go forward. But it would hardly be a trial without witnesses.

And for Thor, prince of Asgard and his father’s heir, it was well within his power to summon any witness he liked.


	5. Bleed

The guards’ grip on his arms was tight and controlling, as if Loki did not know the way to the hall. As if they expected he would disappear from their midst at any moment.

It was almost pathetic, that they still feared him at all. They knew nothing whatsoever if they believed him likely to perform any magic, or even some more mundane means of escape. Driving his bound hands into the stomach of one of the guards holding him, and then the other, and kicking the third and fourth down, would permit him to flee. But that would gain him nothing; still bound, still powerless, and even more Odin’s enemy and concern, facing yet more punishment when they inevitably recaptured him.

No, passivity was the key to victory here.

Why did he have to keep reminding himself of that? He was resolved, he was, he had a plan, he knew what he had to do. He had accepted every command and hardship Odin had handed down thus far. Why did he still entertain thoughts of resistance?

No more. He would simply let himself fall down at Odin’s feet, and fall further, fall until he was out of sight and memory, until he could vanish in truth.

He had been their _king_ once, and now he meant to hide from them.

They entered the hall, and Loki held his head up higher. All Asgard seemed arrayed before him once more, as they had been when he had first been sentenced for attacking Midgard. Faces were turned his way, eyes staring, his name on a thousand tongues.

They had not been this attentive even when he had ruled them. Was this what it took to be noticed? Would they cheer and shout for Thor’s mere presence, and only take note of Loki when he attacked the weak and innocent?

He despised them almost as much as they did him.

The guards halted him at the base of the dais, looking up to where Odin stood before the throne. His eye was still and cold, expression almost apathetic, but for a twist of disgust, and none could have said that this man had ever called himself Loki’s father.

He swung his arm high, and drove the butt of his spear to the marble of the dais. The hall rang with it, and the guards shoved Loki down to his knees. They cracked hard against the floor, and his head rocked with the motion before he could hold himself steady. How tempted were they to continue, and push him flat at Odin’s feet? He braced himself, muscles tight, to give them no chance, and set himself proudly, head tall, back straight, chained hands neatly placed on his thighs.

They could make him kneel, they could gag him and bind him and stage a trial full of lies that were almost worthy of his mouth, but they could not change him. He could submit and give in and yield, but he would do it as _him_.

Odin opened his mouth.

“Oh, great to see I’m not late to the party!”

The voice sent heat rushing down Loki’s spine, and his heart ignited in his chest.

_Stark._

~

Thank god he’d been wearing shoes when Thor had picked him up because walking across the great throne room of the gods in bare feet would have made it sound like a bathroom or something. At least in his reinforced work boots he could slam his steps down nice and hard and that sounded pretty dignified and ominous.

He was in front of an entire assembled _pantheon_ , he needed all the dignity and ominousity - was that even a word? - that he could get.

Walking in ahead of Thor probably gave him quite a lot.

Loki’s shoulders had tensed at his words but he hadn’t moved apart from that, but considering that he was surrounded by what looked like four linebackers, only actually armed, standing up and saying _hi_ wasn’t an option. Given that he was also still gagged, according to Thor’s incredibly rushed and emotional briefing between their landing site and this hall, _hi_ was doubly not on the menu.

Okay, so, Loki kneeling and the power of Asgard standing over him. This wasn’t like that Senate committee he’d bullshitted his way through; he’d said whatever he’d wanted because they couldn’t have touched him even if they’d had the guts to try. This was different. This was serious, he couldn’t afford to piss these guys off, if they were willing to chain Loki and force him down _before_ they’d even sentenced him, how much further could they take this? Loki would never have knelt of his own free will, and taking his pride away was a crime all of its own.

He had to be really, really careful. Shouting at Thor had worked well enough, but this was a formal trial, and he would have to get this right first time.

The serious-looking one-eyed dude in front of the massive throne looked over Tony’s shoulder. “Explain yourself, Thor.”

“I have summoned the only witness to the events you accuse Loki of,” Thor said in his prince-of-the-gods-so-shut-the-fuck-up-and-listen voice, the kind that gave the team headaches whenever he used it because he’d asked them to pass the poptarts three times already. “Tony Stark of Midgard, the Man of Iron, a warrior and leader of great renown. My friend,” and that was slightly louder, making sure everybody knew that Thor called Tony _friend_ , very nice, “may I present my father, Odin Allfather, King of Asgard and Protector of the Nine Realms.”

Okay, was he supposed to bow here? Thor hadn’t told him _anything_ about Asgardian protocol. But it couldn’t be that hard to figure out, because something like flinging his arms around Loki and wailing _leave him alone_ was obviously right out, and politeness was politeness, even on Asgard. No bow then, but a nice nod should be fairly respectful, and he could throw in some kind of title. “Your majesty. I’m here to speak on Loki’s behalf.” He walked forward again, crossing the hall, and coming up parallel with Loki, it would just be stupid to come here to defend him and then stand as far away from him as he could.

Odin Whatshisname leveled a glare at Loki that Fury would have envied. “Are you not ashamed to see the proof of your depravity before you?”

Whoa, that make exactly no sense. “Uh, kind of going for the foregone conclusion there, because I’m meant to be the victim here but I’m telling you there was no depravity going on. I have no idea how you found out about this,” and there was a question to hold on to for later, because he’d really thought that Thor had believed him and it wasn’t like Loki would have accused himself of rape, “but seriously, somebody’s got it wrong. Nothing happened that I didn’t agree to.”

“Does your misuse of our generosity know no bounds?” and Odin really wasn’t listening to Tony _at all_ , it was like everything was about Loki, kneeling in the middle of this fucking huge floor and looking completely alone even with four guards around him and Tony and Thor right there and on his side. “Is it not enough for you to attack this man, you must make him believe in your innocence? You bespell Thor into supporting you and force him to drag this mortal once more into your schemes?”

Some trial, if they weren’t even trying to find out what happened, if Odin had already made his decision. They weren’t even letting Loki speak for himself, and how could anybody cover up those cold lips and beautiful voice, and nobody was listening to Tony either. “Hey, I’ve come a long way for this, I’d appreciate it if you would hear me out.”

The eye slid sideways and locked on his, and yeah, he could believe that this was the king of the gods because he was seeing _everything_. Odin gave a tired sigh that sounded exactly like Howard had on the rare occasions he’d given up five minutes to humor Tony, and that was probably a bad sign because Howard had never actually taken him seriously but at least it was better than nothing. “Speak.”

Tony sucked in a deep breath. Polite and calm, right, because it was Loki’s entire life on the line here. Tony glanced over at Loki, kneeling and bound and silenced but still so beautiful with the arch of his neck and the elegant curl of his hands and the sheer power in his eyes as he looked back. Fuck, it had only been this morning that he’d looked into those eyes after kissing him. That was what was at stake here.

_Right first time._

He tucked his hands behind his back and took a couple steps forward so he had clear room to pace, movement attracted eyes and people paid attention to what they looked at. And now to give them something to pay attention to. “Yesterday I was captured, along with my commander, Thor, and Loki, and thanks to our captors, I was dying. Loki’s magic was enough to save my life, but they didn’t want to let him help me. They wanted us to fight, instead. Together,” yeah, emphasize the _together_ , they’d both been in this, “we decided that _appearing_ to fight meant they would leave us alone and let Loki use his magic to save me. We planned it together.”

Odin’s eye widened. “You admit he used magic upon you?” 

Ooh, dangerous question, hadn’t he said something about Loki bespelling Thor into taking his side? “I’d be dead right now if he hadn’t.” Technically possibly true, he’d probably had about three days to live before the shrapnel got to him and they’d been captured for only a few hours, but it wasn’t impossible that one bit could have been closer than that, and he wasn’t under oath anyway. “Everything he did, I agreed to. No crime.”

Odin shifted his weight and leaned back a little, and if he was distancing himself from Tony then things weren’t looking good, but on the other hand that much armor had to be heavy and he could just be getting comfortable. This would be so much easier if he didn’t have to read alien body language!

“Mortal, it grieves me to tell you that you are not in your right mind.”

 _Mortal_ , he had a name, even if Odin didn’t know what _Tony Stark_ meant on Earth, he could still use it. He really was a jerk.

“Loki has attacked you brutally, and bewitched your spirit and memories into thinking him innocent. Have you not seen his marks on you?”

“What, these?” He flipped a hand at the bruises on his face. “These are from the guards - who were hitting _both_ of us. Come on! Like you say, I’m mortal. Don’t you think that if he wanted to hurt me I’d be a bloody pulp right now? I’m not strong enough to fight him off and everybody knows it. So logically, he wasn’t attacking me. Because if he was, he’d have killed me.”

“Only magic would cause you to defend him so.” Kingy walked down the little steps to the floor, and came up to Tony. Why were all Asgardians so freaking tall? Tony tilted his head back and stretched out his spine but very carefully kept his feet _flat_ , no need to look desperate, and at least the boots gave him another inch of height. “Believe me when I tell you that his cunning and treachery know no bounds.”

“Believe you? Why should I believe you when you won’t believe me? Have you listened to a single word I’ve said? I’m not pressing charges! Let’s pretend for half a second that maybe he did do something,” and _god_ , that had to be enough conditionals because he was not about to let Loki _believe_ that he meant that, “well, maybe I don’t care! Maybe I’m just grateful to be alive, and we’ll leave it at that. Maybe I’d rather not have him gunning after me for revenge!”

“He will not be able to seek vengeance upon you, that I promise.”

 _Fuck_ , that was the last part that Tony needed him to listen to! Okay, okay, something else, something that the space Vikings would like, “Okay. So let’s keep pretending, and say I’m the victim here. So maybe you should, uh… give him to me. For _my_ vengeance.”

The eye narrowed and uh-oh, that idea hadn’t gone over well at all, which was totally unfair, hadn’t the Vikings been into thralls and stuff? “You would make of him a slave?”

Tony jerked a thumb over his shoulder to Loki, kneeling and bound and gagged. “You guys seem to have made a pretty good start.”

“ _Enough!_ ”

“It’s _not_ enough!” and oh boy, he had just shouted down the king of the gods, he was probably about to get smote for this, but he’d come way too far to give in now and Tony fucking Stark never gave in to anything and, fuck it all, Loki needed him. He was going to rip Odin a new eye socket. “Get this through your head! Loki did not rape me. I was there, so I know. He saved my life!”

“Have care how you speak,” and yep, this really was Thor’s father, but if they spoke the same then why weren’t they the same enough to believe Tony? Why the hell was this jerk so adamant? “Loki may control your mind, but your words are still your own.”

“How would you know? You haven’t _listened_.”

“You have nothing to say worth hearing. You have no place here. You will be housed in the guest chambers until you are returned to Midgard.”

“No, you are not just getting rid of me like that,” he wasn’t _done_ , there had to be more he could do, he couldn’t just walk away and leave Loki here like this, Loki _needed_ him, Loki had come through when Tony had been desperate and Tony had to, _had to_ , make this work.

Except words weren’t enough when nobody would listen to them and he wasn’t in the suit so he couldn’t just grab Loki and fly off with him and he didn’t have anything else. That was it, he’d really lost, he’d convinced Thor of Loki’s innocence and he’d won every other argument he’d ever been in, but he really couldn’t change this one old man’s mind.

Old man walked past him and Tony turned to see. Odin shook his head at Thor, who’d moved to stand right beside Loki and apparently repelled the guards into looming a bit further away. “You should never have brought him here, Thor.”

“I did what I thought right!” Thor looked really princely and godly right now, in the full armor and sweeping blond hair and that protective expression, his hand on Loki’s shoulder, which Loki was definitely leaning into, very subtly and Tony could probably only see it because he was looking so closely, but he totally was. And this was why Thor had kept insisting that Loki was his brother when they’d first met, it was because it was _true_ , blatantly and undeniably true.

“You did what Loki wanted.”

“Indeed? Then why have I not already freed him? Why have I not taken him from the palace and hidden him safely? If he sought to escape justice, and owned all my assistance, why is he still here?”

Yeah, that made _sense_ , but nobody was listening to it, Odin just shook his head again and waved a hand at Tony. “Remove him.”

“ _No_ , you are _not_ chucking me out- ow!” He twisted in the grip, hands on his shoulders and arms like lead octopi, did they have no concept of personal space, why couldn’t he blast them right out of there? “Get off!” The hands didn’t even move relative to him, just held on while he struggled and _damn_ , that was tight, that really hurt- “Who’s attacking who now? This is worse than anything _he_ did to me!”

Odin growled. “Have you no dignity?”

“ _None_ ,” Tony spat, hooking one of his legs around the guard’s and jerking, and god that felt like a concrete structural support, solid and immobile and dense, and he’d said it himself, a puny mortal couldn’t fight back against this. But that didn’t mean he was going to _let_ them manhandle him out of here, he hadn’t freed Loki yet, _he wasn’t done._

He met Loki’s eyes, wide and tense, but Loki shook his head minutely and his face above the gag looked pained and _oh_ , Tony was getting hurt in front of him, for _his_ sake, and wasn’t that exactly what Loki had been protecting him from when they’d been captured? Tony had already risked injury in defending Loki from Thor this morning, and Loki had been choking from Thor’s stranglehold but still reached out and told him _don’t._

And it was exactly the same thing all over again. _Don’t get hurt for me_. Especially because this time there was literally nothing Loki could do for him and he had to feel just as powerless as Tony and Tony would do anything to make that feeling go away.

If there was nothing else he could do for Loki, he could manage this one thing. “Okay!” he shouted, and went limp in the hands and put his feet back underneath him. “Okay, okay, I give up! Hilton Asgard, fine by me.”

Odin nodded at him and his limpets. “Begone.” His gaze met Thor’s, and then lowered to Loki, and he scowled. “Thor.”

Thor’s fingers tightened on Loki’s shoulder, but he let go and followed his father back to the throne, and Tony was being pulled away and it felt so wrong to just leave Loki there, completely alone, but there was nothing else he could do.

_Fuck!_

~

“Loki Silvertongue, despite your actions, we have extended every love and courtesy to you. Yet you have denied our hand held out to you. You have proven unrepentant. You have abused the trust we gave you. You took advantage of our generosity to brutally attack and rape an innocent man. You have broken the agreed bindings on your magic. The magic I left you with, you have used to hurt and to deceive. You are unworthy of even this small mercy.”

Thor’s hands balled into fists as if attempting to grip the air to hold himself back. Father was wrong, utterly wrong, monumentally wrong, and still he believed every word.

But Thor’s word was the important one. Thor’s word to Loki that he would not interfere, that he would let things happen. He had already stretched that promise far enough in bringing Stark here. Thor would do nothing more to protect his innocent and defenseless brother.

But Loki had a plan. He had to have a plan. Loki knew what he was doing. Loki needed Thor to stand aside.

Thor stood now beside his father, looking down at Loki, alone and friendless below the dais. Why was he not there with his brother? Why did he not stand beside the one who was in the right?

_Because Father ordered me here. And I cannot disobey Father’s orders._

“I strip you of your power!”

_Oh, Loki._

Thor shut his eyes against his brother’s pain. Thor himself had barely endured the same, and he had not relied on magic as his greatest strength. To have everything he thought was part of him taken away, and to be left to survive without it, was beyond cruel.

Thor opened his eyes again. Loki would need him. Thor had done this before; he would help his brother through it.

Father’s outstretched hand closed as if he were taking hold of Loki’s power, and he pulled it back.

Loki flinched and fell forward onto his hands. Thor did not reach out to help him, could not, not without making Loki seem weak. Loki would not thank him for that. He was already losing his magic; Thor did not need to make it appear that he could not even stand.

Then his face turned blue, and the color spread out down his neck. The pale eyes burned red instead, and markings rose from his skin, thin lines like a map of a river.

 _Jotun_.

Born a Jotun, born to Laufey, but still Thor’s brother for all that. For all his whole body was now the blue of Midgard’s sky and his eyes looked like something impossible, this was still Loki, Thor’s Loki. Under the color, under the ridges, it was Loki’s familiar face, Loki’s hands. Nothing had changed.

Shocked gasps rose from the assembled crowd. Loki was not some spectacle to be gaped at, he remained a Prince of Asgard and Thor’s own brother, and he would not tolerate whispers behind Loki’s back. Thor glared, but could not silence them.

Loki hissed in pain, and Thor’s eyes snapped back. Bleeding welts whipped across his skin, dark blue blood spilling from them. Loki bent over further, shuddering, and Thor heard a shout leak around the gag. White bones burst through his hands, broken, _shattered_ , and blood gushed from his fingers. Loki raised his head slowly, face torn to ribbons, and leveled a glare at Father that chilled Thor.

What had Father done?

And then there was no skin left on Loki, it was all that dark blue, all raw, dripping blue. Loki’s jaw broke free of the gag and he screamed.

He screamed like a dying thing, screamed out pure agony and torment. It struck Thor breathless like a physical blow, clawing at his heart and turning his stomach.

_What is this?_

_Loki!_

Thor ran forward as Loki collapsed, still screaming knives into Thor’s chest. “Put it back!”

He dropped to his knees in the ocean of his brother’s blood and reached out. But he could not touch him, not like this, not flayed bare. Anything Thor did could only make the pain worse, worse than the impossible horror it already was.

“Put his magic back!”

Loki thrashed and writhed, bloody fabric catching in his flesh and the manacles scraping his wrists almost to the bone. Thor seized them and held them still, and did not let go even when Loki screamed louder. “Loki, stop! Don’t move!”

Could Loki even hear him?

Could _Father?_

“ _Make it stop!_ ”

And Loki’s screams died. The silence rang in Thor’s ears. Loki was frozen still, utterly still; even the blood covering him had stopped flowing. At last.

But Loki did not change. He did not heal. Still bloody, still broken. How could Father not heal Loki at once? How could he leave his own son in this state? If he had already stopped it, stopped Loki’s screaming, stopped everything, how could he not go on?

Perhaps Father had not stopped it.

Perhaps Loki had.

Thor seized his wrist and felt for a pulse. Loki could not be dead, not from this, Father could not have killed him! His fingers slipped in the dark blue blood, in the bare muscle, but there it was, a fluttering under his fingers, weak and shaky and almost smothered under Thor’s own galloping hearbeat, but it was there. Loki was alive. Thor gave a sob, and pulled his brother into his arms. He did not protest or stir, he could not even feel it, but he lived.

For now.

What had Thor allowed here?

“Father,” Thor said, and choked on his own tears. “Father, please, put it back. Give his magic back.”

“The sentence has been carried out,” Father said, his voice calm and level, as if Loki’s agony had not touched him at all. “I cannot undo it.”

“But you cannot mean to leave him like this! Could you not _hear-_ ”

“Enough!”

Enough? How could it be enough? How could Father leave him like this? Loki could still die from this, die from blood loss and shock. Even if he survived, his pain would be immense, and his hands simply unusable. “Father, I _beg_ of you-”

“Summon the chief healers to my private hall,” Father said, voice ringing out, as kingly and steady as if nothing had happened. “Thor, bring him.” He walked down the dais, and passed Thor and Loki as if they were not there. As if he had made his command, and now thought nothing more of the matter.

Healers. Skilled as they were, how could Father take that path? How could he not give Loki’s magic back at once? Just a little, just enough to hide it all away again. Father was _king_ , there was no-one to stop him changing his mind. He could rescind the sentence at once, without opposition. Why did he insist on going through with this?

Why had he turned against Loki so completely?

Thor sobbed again, and rested his cheek on Loki’s head. Even there he was bloody, his hair damp with it, canyons torn into the underlying skin. Thor should not have been touching him at all, like this, but could he truly make it any worse? Even if he could, he could not release his brother when there was no-one else who would take him.

Thor was all that Loki had left.

He worked both his arms beneath Loki’s body, and forced himself to his feet, lifting Loki. He could hear the wet drops of Loki’s blood falling from both of them like rain. His steps were slow, fearful that movement should wake Loki. Thor could not imagine the suffering, the pain, that Loki would be in when he came back to himself. He could not even find appropriate words to name it.

His legs were trembling, making the floor seem unsteady under his feet, and his boots were slippery. He held Loki tighter, and felt the pooling blood shift in his clothes. Loki seemed to be nothing but blood, his skin raked away, his hands all but destroyed.

How had this happened? This had appeared when Father took Loki’s power from him. Loki must have been hiding the wounds with his magic.

Who had done this to him? Who had dared touch Loki so?

How had Thor not known about this? How had Thor permitted this to happen? How had he not slaughtered every creature responsible?

_Brother, why didn’t you say anything?_

Perhaps he had, and Thor had not listened. Or not understood, or forgotten. Thor had failed Loki greatly in the past. Why should he not have failed him in this, too? What if it had been some action of Thor’s that had led Loki here, skinned and near-dead in Thor’s arms? Something Thor had done - or not done.

How long had Loki concealed this from them? Could it have been years that Thor had not known?

_Oh, my Loki. What happened to you?_

The healers would have to be able to fix this. If Father would not permit Loki his magic, then the healers were his only hope.

_What if that isn’t enough?_

It would have to be enough. It would have to be. If Thor lost Loki to this, how could he go on? Loki had asked him to let his punishment happen, but Thor had never agreed to let him die.

He would not die, he could not. Thor would not let him go. Not again.

The healers would fix this, or they would answer to Thor. He had failed his brother; he would not allow others to do the same.

Loki would be well.

He _would_.

~

His skin was agony, raw flesh driving pain into his bones in jagged lashes. Something was touching him, something digging into him, eating at the wounds. But it had been worse, and he kept himself silent and still. Just.

_Hurts!_

Yes, yes, it hurt, it all hurt, but if he could _think_ that, then he was still together enough to fight back. He could hold himself motionless, because he still knew that moving would make it hurt even more. He did not curl up and howl. That would not make it any better, and would only draw attention. Being ignored was far safer. He kept his eyes closed, because he had eyes, right now, and did not stir.

Where was he now? How much time had he lost?

_What have they done?_

There had been more.

 _Oh_ , there had been, his hands - he had only known he had hands because of how much they had hurt, shapeless storms of pain.

His fingers twitched, but they did not fall apart now. No, it was only the shredded skin and the scraping of what he was wrapped in.

He wanted to scoff, but kept his silence. _Only_.

He twitched his fingers again, and flexed his hands. They burned, but shallowly; they were skinless like the rest of him, but his bones were no longer broken. Why crush them only to heal them so soon?

It was another game. It had to be. They wanted him to think them kind. To remember what they _had_ done, and then see the partial easing as an example of what he could earn.

No. He knew better. They lied, lied every time, always broke their promises, always came back. He would not play even on his terms. He had tried that, tried hiding rebellion under his submission, tried to outguess them. He had failed. And paid for it.

Paid in blood and skin and bone until he had thought himself mad, for nobody sane could _hurt_ that much.

_I will make it stop. All of it._

_They won’t touch me again._

Voices were near him, quiet and soft, and fading further. Moving away? He would have to assume so.

He cracked his eyes open, and saw an instrument tray, knives bathed in golden light. Presented with an opportunity like this, with hands to take advantage? Eyes to see, and ears to hear that he was alone? This was a trap. They _wanted_ him to try something, wanted to mock him when he failed.

_Then I will have to not fail._

He flung out a hand and seized something sharp. It cut his flesh as he grabbed it. The tray fell loudly. Voices shouted and came nearer.

“ _Stop!_ ”

_NO._

He flipped the knife and drove it between his ribs. It felt bright and fresh and clean. His breath caught, and bubbled, and he tasted bitter metal in his throat. Good. He yanked it back, and stabbed again, higher, felt the second wound lance deeper.

His vision was darkening, but they looked shocked and horrified.

It must have worked, then.

Loki grinned at the Chitauri, and spat through his bloody teeth. “Make me invade Midgard _now_.” 


	6. Tried

Thor stared down at the blue wash of new skin across Loki’s face. The healers had worked speedily and well, and had left no signs of the ravaged near-corpse that Loki had once been. But Thor could see it still, the destruction of Loki’s hands and the ruin of his skin, torn away until he had been more blood than not. Until the blood drenching him had hidden any surviving skin from sight. Such pain would have been beyond anything Thor had ever felt. For Loki to have forgotten his hard-held dignity to the point of screaming and writhing before all of Asgard meant it must have been indescribable.

Yet Thor had never thought that Loki would try to kill himself for it.

He crouched beside his brother’s bed, and ran his fingertips over Loki’s nearer hand where it lay curled on the sheets. Thor had turned at the crash of the healer’s tools, and seen Loki with the knife in this very hand. Had yelled at him to stop, and Loki had smiled and stabbed himself _twice_ before Thor had reached him.

And he had said _make me invade Midgard now_.

It had not been Thor and the healer’s hall he had seen at all. No, the words told Thor that Loki had thought himself somewhere else, and that his attack on Midgard had not been what it seemed. _Make me_. Had it not been a plot of Loki’s? Had someone forced him into war? But if so, why not accept Thor’s aid when he offered? Why not flee with him back to Asgard? Why not tell him of the threat when he knew, had to know, that Thor would protect him?

 _I do not understand_.

It almost brought a smile to his lips, for he had never understood Loki. His confusion and ignorance now were almost normal. And Loki had ever loved to demonstrate how very confused and ignorant Thor had been, and explain the whole truth to him, that he might grasp the immensity of what he had not known.

 _Tell me, brother_. Thor clasped Loki’s hand, and felt the bones whole beneath the smooth blue skin. _Tell me everything_.

Loki’s eyelids flickered, and opened. The bright red irises settled on Thor. “You’re dead too?”

“No! No, Loki, neither of us is dead. You are in a healing room, on Asgard.”

Loki’s eyes shifted away and his face creased, just a little. “I thought…”

Loki had thought he had succeeded. Had killed himself indeed for his suffering. “What happened to you?” _What drove you to your death under my eyes?_

Loki looked back, expression now smooth and composed. “You were there, were you not? Father took my magic, and did not ask what I was presently using it for.”

“You know what I mean, Loki.” Why had he been using it at all?

Loki snarled, ripped his hand from Thor’s, and threw the blankets back. He shot from the bed and strode to the window, and leant on the sill as though the effort had exhausted him. He wore a thin brown tunic and black trousers, the colors strange against his blue skin. “Yes, of course I do. You think I could forget?”

“No, I do not. I know that I never will.”

Loki’s head dropped lower until his chin almost rested against his chest. His hands were bright against the soft yellow stone. Bright blue, not dark, and still bore the shape of hands. How had Loki reached the state where the opposite had been true?

“Who did this? What happened to you?”

Loki’s laugh was sharp and bitter. “What, was seeing it once not enough? You know what happened. I thought you said you would never forget.”

“ _Who did this_ , brother?”

A shudder ran through Loki’s body, and Thor rose to his feet. Whoever these fiends were, Loki feared them, even in the heart of Asgard with Thor beside him. Thor moved closer, closer still, until his chest was almost flush to Loki’s back. He raised a hand and took Loki’s shoulder. Loki twitched, and shrugged it off.

_Can I not even comfort you?_

But then Loki sighed, and pushed away from the window, leaning back into Thor’s body. Thor dared to lift his arms again and wrap them around his brother. It could not make this right, could not erase everything that had brought them to this point, and yet it was glory incarnate to be able to simply hold Loki. That after being so brutally hurt, Loki would still allow Thor to touch him.

Loki turned in his arms without breaking Thor’s grip, but his smile was brittle and false, too tight around the edges. For all he tolerated Thor’s closeness he was not about to respond in kind. “It was a trick. A game. To see Odin’s face when he hurt me.”

“No.” Thor shook his head, hard, as if to shed Loki’s lies from his skin. “No, you would not do that to yourself. How could you, when Father was _taking_ your magic?”

Loki hissed, and his whole body went rigid. “Do you really believe I would give it up that easily?”

“I saw you give up. I saw you try to kill yourself, and smile at it.”

“Do you not think a clean death is more merciful than to be trapped in that state? I suppose you should be grateful that Odin allowed me to be healed at all.”

“I? Should you not be grateful too?”

Loki’s lips thinned, and his hand rose to his ribs and traced the two new scars left there, but his fingers were shaking as if he could hardly bear to touch the marks. “I meant what I did. I _wanted_ to die. Perhaps Odin thinks I don’t deserve a swift end by my own hand.”

Thor shuddered at how easily Loki spoke of it. The trembling in his voice said that it was not a lie; perhaps not the whole truth, but it was no lie. “Who pushed you to this? Who hurt you so much you tried to kill yourself for it?”

“Falling through the universe is not easy,” Loki spat, red eyes flickering. For all their color, Thor knew them, knew the way they skittered away from Thor’s own now. _This_ was a lie, and Loki too desperate to hide it. “Is it any wonder that I should be a little harmed by passing through a thousand suns?”

“You lie,” and that simple spoken truth was enough to drive tears from Thor’s eyes. Would Loki always be like this? Would he always keep Thor at arm’s length when all Thor wanted was to hold him close? “You are still lying to me. This was not a passive injury as you say, Loki. I heard you. You put a knife into your chest and said _make me invade Midgard now_.”

Loki hissed again, and tore himself from Thor’s arms. His blue fingers clenched and unclenched at his sides. Yes, there was truth here, a painful and hidden truth beneath Loki’s words, something he did not wish Thor to reach. But Thor could not stop, could not leave Loki like this, hurt and afraid. Thor could not let the cause of his brother’s pain and fear live.

“Someone has hurt you, and you will tell me who!”

“No, I won’t.” Loki’s fingers flexed again, and his voice fell to a whisper. “I will not have you die for me.”

“I would _gladly_ die for you,” Thor said, pulling Loki back around to face him and lifting his hand to cup around the side of Loki’s neck, to make Loki look at him, believe him. Loki’s eyes had softened, but they looked more weary than kind, as if he kept his anger from his face only because he had no strength to hold it there.

“That’s the problem.”

Why? Why should Thor not die for his brother? Thor’s mouth opened again, to demand answers, to rip the truth from Loki’s lips.

“Where’s Stark?” Loki asked.

“Stark?” What had Stark to do with Loki’s injuries? Nothing, surely; it was a sign he did not wish to continue to talk of them. Loki was not usually so blunt when he directed conversation. Was he so exhausted he could not even speak like himself? Or did he truly wish to know about Stark so much he would forego time-consuming subtlety? “In one of the guest chambers, under guard. When your trial is resolved, Father will have me take him back to Midgard.”

Loki nodded. “When did he leave?”

“Leave? I said he is still here.”

“The _hall_ , you fool, when did he leave the hall?”

“Before Father took your magic. Before he had spoken of your sentence at all.”

Loki nodded again. “So he did not see. He does not know.” His eyes locked with Thor’s, burning fiercely, the red iris against his blue skin making them burn all the fiercer. “Do not tell him. Do not tell him what I am.”

“You need not be ashamed of this!” Thor took Loki’s hands in his. They did not freeze his flesh as other Jotuns’ touch did; was that not proof that Loki was not defined by his birth? “Stark will not judge you less for this, just as I do not.”

“It is bad enough to _be_ a Jotun, I do not wish to explain what one _is_. Tell him…” Loki hesitated, and licked his lips absently. Thor felt his heart clench. Loki _never_ allowed others to see how much thought he put into his words. To take so long to compose his message to Stark made it monumentally important to him. “Tell him I wished I could have seen him again. And tell him I let go.”

“You _will_ see him again. I promise. You will tell him yourself.”

Loki shook his head. “No-”

The door swung wide.

Thor’s head turned, and he saw another quartet of guards, holding that cursed box of Loki’s chains. He felt Loki’s hands stiffen, but if they meant to bind him again then there was still nothing Thor could do to stop them. He had given his word not to interfere. He would break it in a breath if Loki asked, but until he did then Thor was powerless.

“Odin Allfather has declared the rest of the sentence to be carried out.”

Thor stepped away from Loki, his palms empty and exposed, and faced the guards fully. “What is this? Was stripping his magic not enough? You come to bear my brother to further torment in the name of _justice_?”

The leader raised his chin as if proud of his mission. “I follow my king’s orders, my prince. The prisoner is to be brought before the court once more.”

 _The prisoner_. They would not even use Loki’s name.

“Your father requests your presence, my prince.”

This had gone far enough. Thor could not end it, could not stop it, but he could show all, and especially his father, that he did not approve of this. Loki would not stand alone again. “I shall go in with my brother.”

“My prince-”

“Did my father request my presence _at his side?_ ”

“No, my prince.”

“Then I shall be present. As _I_ wish.”

“Yes, my prince.”

He looked back at Loki, who was smiling gently. It seemed to spread over his whole face, the tension draining from him. “You do know what they’ll say, when they see you with me?”

“They shall say that Thor has at last learned his place.” And if Loki could smile at Thor’s support, then he had not learned that lesson too late.

Two guards stepped up to affix the chains, and Thor held himself still and stood aside. The healers had done nothing for the bruises, a ring of dark rippling indigo around each wrist. Thor’s fingers itched to tear the chains from the guards’ hands and fling them from the window before letting Loki endure further pain. But he let the manacles clamp down over the marks, as Loki would wish, and did nothing at the sound of Loki’s barely-there hiss of discomfort.

The guards stepped back. Thor moved in beside Loki, and took his arm. Gently, barely touching him, leaving him free to pull away if he wished. But Loki shifted a little closer, and Thor tightened his hold. Not forcing him, not dragging him, not enough of a grip that Loki could not still break loose in a heartbeat. Just a reminder. _I’m here_.

And if Thor had his way, he would never be anywhere else.

No matter who had hurt Loki so, no matter how blind their father, he would not leave Loki’s side.

Not again.

~

Tony was about ready to launch a frontal assault on the guards outside his door, if it would have done any good.

Unfortunately he was still a puny mortal and there was no way he could outfight Asgardian strength, not to mention his complete lack of armor, weapons, or really anything he could use to his advantage.

Clint would sneak out through the air ducts. Too bad Asgard hadn’t invented climate control yet.

Natasha would seduce the guards, and then kill them. Effective, but being _A_ , male, and _B_ , unarmed, Tony’s chances of failure were too high to even use that plan as a last resort. Besides, they weren’t his type.

Thor and Steve and a Hulked-out Bruce would smash the doors down and run for it. Unfortunately Tony wasn’t ninety percent muscle.

He had brains, great, terrific, what was he supposed to do with those? Who’d have thought that being a genius engineer wasn’t much help when there was nothing _to_ engineer?

_Goddammit!_

What was _happening?_ The last Tony had seen of Loki had been him kneeling there alone as Thor was summoned up after his father. Had they done anything yet? Or would there be a whole heap of Shakespearean speechifying about Loki’s laundry list of character defects?

Fuck, Loki could have been _executed_ by now! What the hell was he going to do if Loki died? Because given the way he’d been thinking about him pretty much non-stop since he’d left, how he’d sat in a freezer just to feel kind of like Loki was touching him, how he’d told Clint and Natasha how much he’d liked fucking Loki, Tony was pretty close to being totally obsessed. He’d come all the way to _Asgard_ on Thor’s mere declaration that _Loki needs you_. Tony had finally found somebody who actually understood the terrible, terrible temptation he walked next to every day, who knew what it was to take and take until he found himself holding way too much but to let some of it go meant he risked losing everything.

_You could rule this world as I tried to do._

Loki had been right, Tony really could. He had enough connections, money, and popularity to get himself elected President, and with a bit of luck, like a conveniently-timed war giving him an excuse to bomb everybody who didn’t agree with him, that would be it. He really would have the world as his.

And Loki knew that, Loki could look right through him and see how close, how easy, such a thing was, and because he’d been in the exact same place he knew how dangerous it was to step over that line. And Tony had _found_ him and he wanted Loki just as much as Loki wanted him.

And Tony was stuck in this Asgardian motel room, completely useless, practically trapped by aliens _again_ , lying back on the actually very comfortable bed like he was taking a nap while Loki was getting the shit tortured out of him.

The door opened.

“Really not in the mood right now, I’m brooding on how impossible it is to get out of here, seriously, it’s like Fort Knox but backwards.”

“Do all mortals talk as much as you?”

Soft, female, and actually listening to him: not a guard. Tony looked up.

She was old, simply _was_ , even though she didn’t look it, only she didn’t look young either, she just looked ageless, like she’d always existed and always would. She shone softly in the light, jeweled and elegant, carrying this weight of quiet composure. She was smiling at him gently, and she probably did everything gently, it would take an awful lot to knock this woman off her perfectly-centered axis.

“So you are the one who has come for my Loki?”

 _Oh, I came for him all right_.

But that was exactly what all of Asgard wasn’t listening to and somehow it was a bad idea to discuss his sex life with her, especially since she’d called him _my Loki-_ “Who are you?”

“I’m his mother.”

Which made her Thor’s mother, which made her that dickwad king’s wife, which made her the queen of the gods and _Tony was lying on his back in bed in jeans and a t-shirt with oil stains on it_ and what was his problem?

He pushed himself up to his feet, bare feet, that was awkward, and he really wanted his boots back but putting them on would just make everything even more awkward than it already was.

And speaking of awkward, he knew how to deal with royalty but not on these terms, not in his bedroom and dressed like this, and he didn’t even have the simple goal of saving Loki to drive him forward and damn the cultural missteps. This was a social visit, and blunt force wouldn’t do it, but politeness was probably a good start, he should just channel his inner Steve and go from there, and try not to descend into a screaming match like his last conversation with a deity. “Hi. Ma’am.”

She smiled again. Already this was going way better than his dealings with her husband. Maybe he could win her over and get her to pull her _grant your loving wife this favor_ mode on the king, and have Loki pardoned. Okay, that meant he basically had to do _nothing_ he’d ended up doing in the court; yelling, rudeness, and attitude all had to go out the window. He actually had to stick to his plan to keep himself controlled.

It couldn’t be that hard, Asgard seemed practically made of windows, there was an absolutely massive one taking up the two external walls, so big he practically only had internal walls.

“I am glad he has one friend in this who is willing to go so far.” She drifted forward, dress rustling, lifting a hand to float over a chair in her path.

“Um, will you sit?” Should he invite her to sit in her own home? What were the rules for this? He had no data to extrapolate from, what was he supposed to _do?_

She smiled; he hadn’t gone disastrously wrong. Again. “Thank you.” She slipped sideways into the chair and he perched back down on the bed. Okay, chatting with a goddess, no problem, he could do this. He lived with Thor on-and-off, he’d been handling casual conversation with a god for months, but it was a lot easier to talk to Thor over the breakfast bar than to his mother, infinitely regal, poised on her chair like a marble statue.

He and Thor didn’t usually discuss Loki being arrested and tried, either.

“One friend? I thought Thor was on his side?”

Her lips softened just a little and her eyes went dark; her sad smile could rival Pepper’s. “Thor is on Loki’s side as much as he can be, but when it is his father on the other side… that is not very much.”

“Yeah, talk about divided loyalties.”

“Divided loyalty.” Her diction was absolutely perfect, like she was tasting every syllable. “Yes, that is an apt way to phrase it. You, however, Tony Stark of Midgard, have no such division.”

 _Hell_ no. “I’d be with Loki right now if they’d let me. But given the way they actually dragged me out of his trial, I don’t think they’re about to give him visiting hours.”

She rose again in a whisper of rich fabric and Tony stood up too because it was just totally wrong to flop back on the bed with a goddess _and_ a queen standing right in front of him and why was he so underdressed? He was Tony Stark, he knew how to work a suit and be the sharpest guy at any event, and why had he had to come to the home of the gods in clothes he’d been welding in twenty minutes before he’d left?

“How was Loki, when you saw him?”

Lying to her was a very, very, bad idea, but how could he tell Loki’s mother that he’d looked alone and desperate? “Um. Stressed, I think. Pale. He’s in chains again, and the gag thingy from when Thor brought him back the first time. But, uh, he still got through to me. Told me to stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Uh, stop trying to take out the guards trying to wrestle me away from him. Odin ordered me thrown out when I defended Loki a bit too vocally.” Then again, to Tony’s credit, he actually hadn’t come right out and said _go fuck yourself_. “But Loki seemed okay. Why do you ask, haven’t you seen him?”

She shook her head, the jewels in her hair glittering where they caught the light. “I have been forbidden from the proceedings.”

“Which is why you came to me, the victim and sole witness?” Tony was only here because of these proceedings, surely any involvement with him was proceedings-based.

She raised an eyebrow slightly too perfectly to be purely reflex. “These are not proceedings. I have come to welcome my son’s guest.” 

_That’s definitely Loki’s mother._

“And since you know my other son, it is perfectly natural that we should speak of him.”

Great, finally, information, data, he needed to know how to proceed. “What are they going to do? What’s the penalty for, for,” for rape, but that seemed like a good word _not_ to say to Loki’s mother, “for what they’re accusing him of? Which isn’t true, by the way, somebody’s lying or mistaken or something but I swear, Loki never hurt me! Ma’am,” he added because losing his head at Odin was exactly how he’d got into this helpless mess, he could at least _try_ to be polite to her.

She reached out and took his hand. Her skin felt light and soft, sort of papery, but the really expensive high-density photo quality kind. “I know. I know my Loki.”

“Won’t Odin listen to you?”

“He does not want to listen. He believes himself betrayed, and has lost his love for Loki. He sees Loki as a creature that cannot be trusted, and he is only trying to do what he thinks right. If Loki indeed could not be trusted, it would be a dangerous thing for Odin to continue to love him as a son. And I dare not force matters, and insist he give Loki a second chance, for it is Loki who will suffer if I step too far.”

Oh, _Christ_. Tony’s stomach swooped sickly, because he hadn’t just stepped too far, he’d run right over the line and kept going, and if she was right, if Odin would punish Loki for what _Tony_ had done, fuck, he’d never forgive himself.

He had to swallow back his nausea and suck in deep breaths to make himself settle. He lifted his head back up, and saw the queen nodding at him.

“Yes, you understand my dilemma. And thus I do what I can - I come to Loki’s defender, and ensure he is worthy of my son.” Her eyes suddenly slammed to his, harsh and flinty, and he actually flinched back from her vice-like grip on his hand. “Are you? Are you worthy of being the one to whom I entrust my son’s life? Are you going to make him happy? Keep him safe?”

“How should I know?”

Wow, okay, that was… _an_ answer, maybe not a very good one, but at least it was honest. “He’s a god, he’s a thousand years old or something, and I only met him without trying to kill him yesterday, under not-the-best circumstances. I know I want him, I know he deserves way better than the _shit_ he’s getting here, I know I only left because he wanted me to. But that’s all I know. How should I know how to make him happy? I’ve already failed once in keeping him safe. And worthy?” He almost wanted to laugh at himself, _what_ was he doing, sharing this? “I’ve never been worthy of anything in my life, why should I start now?”

“Because Loki needs you to be,” she said, face melting back down into the former warmth, only even more so, the expression that every grandmother was supposed to wear at Christmas, and her hand loosening until it wasn’t strangling his fingers anymore. _Something_ in his answer had been right. “There is much that Loki is facing, and I cannot be certain of Thor. If he follows his father, and he may, Loki will need you just for him to keep on living. But I think, if it comes to that, you are capable of doing that for him.” Her voice was calm and level like it wasn’t touching her at all, but her eyes looked bereft and her grip on his hand was just a little too tight to be purely for _his_ comfort.

He lifted his other hand and wrapped it over hers. “What _is_ he facing? What are they going to do to him?” Whatever they did, it would be Tony’s fault, Tony’s fault for failing him in the court and for simply _being_ the apparent victim, because if they’d never met, never fucked, then this wouldn’t be happening.

Her lips thinned, just a little. “He will be alright.”

And the fact that it was _so_ bad she didn’t even want to tell him about it was worse than any actual answer she could have given.

~

Thor’s hand around his arm felt like armor. Held. Protected. Safe.

 _Could_ he stay? Could he trust Thor to defeat the Chitauri? Thor and all of Asgard, too, for they would not stand idle while the Chitauri attacked. Thor had slain two Chitauri leviathans on Midgard, and the Chitauri themselves had already been decimated by that weapon flung through the portal. Perhaps the balance of probabilities tipped the other way. Perhaps Thor’s strength outweighed that of the enemy. Perhaps Thor would not die.

But hope was a dangerous thing. To let the Chitauri come and _hope_ for Thor’s survival could easily bring him to ruin. Hope had betrayed him before, betrayed him into a millennium-long quest for Odin’s love.

 _Odin_.

Yes, he had more than one reason for leaving. Loki would not choke under Odin’s presence any longer. Not when his so-called father believed him capable of rape. Not when he had not even given Loki one chance to speak for himself.

Unless that was where they walked to now. The guards had not gagged him along with the chains this time. Had Odin’s heart softened to see that Loki had already suffered so?

 _Unlikely_.

Indeed, he could never accuse Odin of sentiment. Odin knew how dangerous Loki’s tongue could be. He himself had called him _Silvertongue_ in this very trial. No, Odin would give him no opportunity to defend himself, not when he might succeed.

More likely, Odin expected Loki to scream and beg mercy once more. Had he not had enough of that already?

 _This is why I must leave_.

He could not stay under Odin’s hand, not like this. Not when his thousand years of fatherhood disappeared in a flash, not when Odin still didn’t want him after everything Loki had done to show him that even after the lies, after learning the truth, he was still an _Odinson_. When Loki was not an Odinson, what was there for him to stay for?

He was no Odinson, but he _was_ Thor’s brother. He would hold to that, cling and never let it go again, throughout whatever Odin did to him now.

The floor beneath his bare feet gained an edge, and they descended the few steps into the hall. Loki raised his head to meet Odin’s eye, and threw back his shoulders as if it were Odin honored with Loki’s presence. _I don’t have to be here._

But he did, and he knew it, and all the posturing and arrogance he could pour from his body would make no difference. His magic was gone; not just beyond his reach, but _gone_ , his skin feeling hollow and overlarge like there was a whole layer of flesh that had been scraped away.

_Almost true._

His fingertips tingled, not the hot-cold rush of power he should have felt, but sympathetic pain, his new fingernails reminding him of just how easily they could be removed again.

It mattered not, as long as that did not happen to Thor. Those who had held Loki would never even _touch_ Thor.

They reached the same point at which Loki had stood before. There was no sign of it, no sign of his blood or fallen skin or torn nails. It was as if it had never happened.

But the tone of his skin told otherwise. The Jotun blue, hidden for so long, the skin of the father he had killed - this he would have concealed until the end of all things, had he had the choice, but Odin had taken that from him too.

Odin thumped the butt of his spear upon the floor, and the silence died with the low ring through the hall. Thor’s hand tightened on Loki’s arm, lifting ever so slightly. _Do not kneel_.

Thor, the good son, his father’s loyal heir, stopping Loki, the condemned, loathed traitor, from kneeling to their king. Loki smothered his smile and held his head just a little higher. Thor was trying, trying to be Loki’s brother and his equal, hand outstretched to pull Loki up to stand beside him. Loki deserved nothing less after all Thor had done to him, and yet… it felt good to have it given. Felt like proof and truth, solid in his chest, that Thor was on Loki’s side. Was _by_ Loki’s side.

And for that, Loki had to leave him.

Odin’s lips thinned, but he would not order Loki to his knees. He would ignore it, as if the insult did not matter. Loki had learned how to act and display from the best, after all. “Loki Silvertongue, the removal of your magic is insufficient to punish such crimes as you have committed…”

Loki swallowed his sigh. Here he was again, waiting to be buried under Odin’s words, worse than lies, for he believed them to be true. Why should he listen any more? Why should he attend to a list of what he was about to suffer? He would be living through it soon enough.

Odin’s voice was pitched so all could hear, but dull and level, almost as if he did not care about what he said. It carried none of the disappointment or anger with which he had banished Thor. But why should Odin feel either for Loki? Why should he expect anything better than betrayal and depravity from a mad Jotun runt?

_Cease your whining._

Even powerless, even chained, even blue-skinned, even _unskinned_ , he was still Loki, still a god and Thor’s brother, and not even Odin could take that away from him.

Well. He had cast Thor out as a mortal; he could take Loki’s godhood. But the rest, all that mattered, that was his to keep.

“… that none may be fooled by your lies again!”

_What?_

How, exactly, did Odin propose to manage that?

_I would know, had I listened._

Thor’s grip on his arm tightened painfully, and Loki glanced down to see his fingers bloodless, tendons standing out with the force of it. Something unpleasant, then, if Thor was so upset by it.

One of his guards stepped closer, and a second one opened the box he held. He pulled out a needle, long and thick and sharp, and a black thread.

_None may be fooled by your lies._

Odin meant to achieve that by making sure Loki could not tell any.

_They mean to sew my lips shut._

Unexpected, from one accounted so wise. Loki almost laughed. 

When Thor had proven proud and rash, Odin had exiled him to Midgard to learn humility and patience. To make him learn. Not so for Loki. If Odin were punishing him in relation to _his_ crime, so called, for the apparent rape, he would surely have Loki castrated, or throw him to the mortals, since it was one of their own that Loki had violated. But to silence his lies, his every word, was nothing to do with Stark. He _had_ lied to Stark - had told him he was worth nothing, that Loki was disgusted to have even touched him - but Odin did not care about those words. He believed them truths. No, this was just cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

But that did not matter. He had a plan, and he had to go through with it. Whatever it took. He could do it, he could keep Thor safe. All it would take was…

Was stabbing pain through his lips, throbbing with each heartbeat, the pull of agony every time he forgot himself and tried to speak, the hollow ache as he slowly starved.

He had suffered worse, far worse, than that, and he would not have it all come to nothing. It didn’t matter _why_ Odin wanted this. All that mattered was that want it he did, and Loki had to give him what he wanted.

 _I can do this. I can. Thor, I can do this for Thor. I will not have the Chitauri kill him because_ I _failed at the last moment!_

Then the guard held the needle out towards him.

Thor’s hand fell from Loki’s arm.

_No._

_They mean_ Thor _to sew my lips shut._

Thor stepped away from him, and took the needle from the guard, a streak of silver so large even Thor’s fingers could not make it look small.

Thor, his brother, who had begged to be allowed to stop this, who had brought Stark to try and convince Odin, who had hesitated to even _gag_ Loki, and he was the one who would sew his lips shut. _Proof and truth that Thor was on his side_ , indeed. Thor obeyed Odin just as much as Loki did. What else should he have expected? Thor’s father came first. Always.

Loki tossed his head back. At least he could count on Thor to do it well. To do it right. Yes, nearly any other hand would enjoy it, would be harsh and brutal.

“Do it, Thor,” he hissed. It sounded wild and desperate, and Thor’s eyes caught his. Thor looked almost sick with it, his grip on the needle loose as if he could not bear to touch it. It would slide through his fingers before it broke Loki’s skin, let alone his flesh.

Thor wouldn’t do it.

_No._

_You gave me your word!_

Thor, his eyes wide and face pale and hands shaking, looked almost as unnerved as Loki. As though sewing Loki’s lips shut would hurt him almost as much as it would hurt Loki.

Well, yes. Of course it would. Of course Thor would revile the thought of doing Loki harm. But he _had_ to do it. Loki’s suffering and silence for Odin’s complacency. Fair trade.

But what did it mean if Thor _would_ do this? Would Thor’s word really be enough to make him sew Loki’s lips shut? Would it erase how desperately Thor had pleaded with him to be able to do something, anything, to _spare_ Loki this trial? How could his own brother do such a thing? How could he stab through Loki’s lips not once, but five or six or more times? Could he punish Loki so when they both knew he was innocent?

If Thor was capable of such an act, would it mean he didn’t love Loki enough to refuse?

_And why should I save him? Why should I save someone willing to do this to me?_

But if Thor did not, what then? If Thor broke his word to Loki, how would that prove his love? Loki needed to go through with this, needed Thor to do it for him. Really, it was no different to putting his chains back on. Loki hadn’t deserved it and Thor hadn’t wanted to, but they’d both done it anyway.

Thor had given Loki his _word_ that he would not interfere.

Yes, Thor had agreed to let Loki suffer whatever punishment Odin deemed appropriate, but Thor had never agreed to do it himself. Loki had not asked _this_ of him. Loki had not asked Thor to make him bleed and tie his screams back in his throat.

Loki had done all this to save Thor. Should he stop if Thor was so hurt in the process? Protect Thor from this torment too?

No. He was saving Thor from something far worse than this. No matter how much Thor felt his heart was broken, it would be nothing compared to the literal heart-breaking the Chitauri would inflict if they took him. Loki could not stop, not now, not when he was so close. And then Loki could escape and hide and keep the Chitauri from Thor, yes, keep Thor safe, keep Thor alive.

_Do it, Thor!_

“I haven’t got all day.”

He wanted this _over_ , wanted it done at last, wanted to get out of sight and let Asgard and Odin begin to forget him.

And when he left, this would be the last thing he had of Thor.

_No!_

No, he did not want Thor’s hands on him like that. Thor was supposed to keep him safe.

_All I want is my brother._

How could his brother also be his executioner? How could Thor do this?

How could he _not?_

If it were anyone but Thor, it would be easy. All Asgard loathed him; they would not have had doubts, and it might have already been over. But Thor was still trying to make himself do it, and Loki didn’t want _him_ to do it, and if there had ever been a more perfect revenge than this one of Odin’s then Loki could not name it, for this would tear them apart.

How would Loki be able to look at Thor’s hands again without seeing that needle in them? How could Thor look at Loki’s lips without knowing that he was the one who had put the scars there?

No, _no_ , that didn’t matter, Loki was _leaving_ , he was never going to look at Thor again.

 _But I don’t want_ this _to be the last I see of him._

 _Curse_ Odin, curse him a thousand times, curse him with every breath Loki had! Odin was exactly the problem here; Odin’s orders would outweigh Thor’s love for Loki. Loki could push, could beg and plead and win Thor’s refusal, but what then? He would merely suffer at another’s hand, and as much as he desired that, Thor turning traitor was a price too high. No, Thor _had_ to obey Odin, they both did.

“ _Do it._ ”

~

The needle in his hand weighed more than Mjolnir. So simple to raise it, and yet his hand wanted nothing more than to be dragged back down, his fingers to fall open and let the vile thing go.

His stomach writhed, hot and miserable, and his breath was shaking. To silence Loki’s words behind metal had been bad enough; to stop his mouth so painfully, and after Loki had already endured so much… How could he do this?

He had given Loki his word that he would not oppose Father any longer; that he would let it be. But could there not be things more important than his word? His brother’s trust, perhaps?

_But why should he trust me if I break my word to him?_

His eyes met Loki’s, and he knew that it was a thousand years of shared life and love that let him read the mingled pride and terror there. He knew that Loki would stand tall and silent as the thread ran through his lips, knew it to be as true as the horror and pain that would scream in his heart.

He knew that Loki would never forgive him. And Thor would never forgive himself.

Thor turned back to Father, sitting high above them, waiting almost impatiently. How could he ask this? How could he wish to drive this wedge between them? Did he not know that they would never trust each other again?

_He must know._

_Then that is exactly what he wants_.

The answer near broke his heart.

Yes, he sought to divide them. To force Thor to see Loki as nothing more than a prisoner to be punished, and Loki to see Thor as the hand that turned against him and gave him over to that punishment.

Father wanted them to think themselves brothers no longer.

He and Loki were not bound by blood. That Odin’s blood was also Thor’s, and was not Loki’s, was a fact, a statement, a rock to build a fortress on. Thor and Loki shared history and love, but those ties were severable, and Father wished them severed.

This wasn’t about Stark at all. This was not about what Loki had _done_ , it was about what he _was_ \- adopted, of their family only by Father’s grace, and apparently unworthy of that gift. It was not about sentencing Loki, it was about parting him and Thor. All Thor’s neglect and Loki’s anger had not done it, and Father sought to force matters, to do what they had refused to do themselves.

But Loki _was_ his brother. He had repeated it to himself a thousand times since the moment he heard of Loki’s heritage, since he had seen with his own eyes Loki’s treachery.

Loki’s treachery.

Loki had done terrible things in the past, and that was enough for Thor to justify chaining and gagging him, but was he really deserving of this? Of having his own brother sew his lips shut?

Father said it was right. Thor’s disagreement did not change his king’s command. His father’s wish, and his king’s. How could Thor stand against that?

But if Thor’s disagreement, and Thor’s word, _and_ Thor’s love, were all worth nothing, why should he follow his king’s commands at all?

Loki was his brother, and nothing changed that.

But Father was his king, and his king’s word was law, and nothing changed that, either.

_Loki._

_Father._

Why did he stand here quibbling with himself? There was no choice to make.

_Then let us see what Father feels at this suffering. Let us see how Odin Allfather hurts for his son._

He raised the needle’s point to slightly pursed lips, and shoved.


	7. Choice

Tony’s head shot up at a distant yell echoing through the palace, loud and pained and angry, something that might have been a word before bouncing off all that marble and gold and it could have been anywhere, anyone, but it _wasn’t_ , it had to be something to do with Loki. “What was that?”

The queen’s lips were pale, and her hands were clenched in her lap, but apart from that her posture was relaxed and her eyes calm. Nothing terribly dire then, but still… “He will be well.”

“Loki?” Had that shout been Loki? Had Loki made that noise _past_ the gag?

_What the hell is going on?_

He could probably find out, he was quick, and if the guards weren’t expecting him he could probably slip past them and they’d be running in armor, which would slow them down, so maybe he could get back to that throne room before they stopped him. Yeah, and then what, because if he was hearing shouts like _that_ one then whatever torture they had lined up for Loki had already started and it was too late.

And he’d told Tony not to get hurt for his sake but _fuck_ if this didn’t hurt worse than anything they could do, when his head was spinning and stomach cramping and heart like a supernova in his chest, and staying away like Loki had asked might actually kill him.

Or was that just wishful thinking?

~

He barely kept his lips together as a lance of fire ripped through them. His shout locked itself in his throat and curled there like a caged beast. The blood started to run, a hot streak rolling down over his chin.

“ _Thor!_ ”

Thor moved his hand to take hold of where the needle’s end broke free of the flesh, and pulled. The metal slid easily, but the thread caught against his lower lip. Thor tugged it through, rough and rapid. Pain throbbed with every heartbeat, but he still stood, and had not made a sound.

 _“Thor, no!_ ”

The only sound here was the rage of a king.

Father’s eye was wide, his mouth open to let loose his horror. He had half-risen from the throne, empty hand outstretched as if he could rip the needle away. Thor let it fall from his hand.

_So that is what your love looks like._

_A shame you would not have extended it to Loki._

Thor turned to see Loki, and the needle swung, thread drawing new lashes of agony where it rubbed against the upper wound. Loki’s face was pale and shocked, his posture slumped from the tightly-held pride of moments before. Slowly, his hands came up to touch his lips, two fingers brushing the corner, exactly where Thor had pushed the needle through his own. His voice was just a whisper. “You’re hurt.”

“ _Thor!_ ”

He faced Father once more, and dragged his lips apart. The thread felt like a whole arrow shaft, swollen and crushing his flesh, but he had faced worse before. “My king?”

Father’s steps echoed as he crossed the hall. His hand reached out, and hovered over Thor’s mouth. “What have you done to yourself?”

“Nothing you would not have had me do to Loki,” Thor spat. How dared Father look so aghast now, when he had ordered this done? What difference should it have made that it was to have been Loki’s lips and not Thor’s?

How dared Father have asked this of him at all?

Yet Loki had asked it of him, too. Loki had looked him in the eyes and all but begged him. Still, Thor had looked back and seen panic and fear there, seen sheer desperation carved into that blue skin. Loki was a liar, and why might not his pleading too have been a lie?

Broken promise or not, there had never been a choice.

“My son-”

“He is my brother!”

“ _He is not!_ ”

Not.

Not his brother.

No.

It was impossible. It was nothing but Thor's fear. Those words could not have been said. They were not real, Father would never speak them. The thread spearing his lips was real, the bright flares of pain with each heartbeat were real, Loki’s shaky breath beside him was real.

And yet… so were the words, if Loki was affected so.

“He has betrayed my trust for the last time. He has refused my every offer of love. It is clear he does not wish to be a part of this family. I am only giving him what he wants.”

“ _You lie!_ ”

Father’s eye widened in what, for another man, might have been panic. “Silence!”

“You lie vilely,” Loki said, his voice trembling but clear and loud all the same. “I killed my true father for you. I watched him take his dying breath, and told him his end came by the hand of _Odin’s_ son. I offered up the defeat of Jotunheim as a gift to your house, and you looked me in the eye and told me _no_. So forgive me if I say it was not _I_ who denied me your love.”

“You see why he must be silenced?” Father shouted, staring at Thor as if he did not care to hear Loki at all, did not even acknowledge his presence expect to protest of him. “You hear how he lies?”

Thor held his head up higher. “I was there, too, and I say that Loki tells no lie. I say he did lay Jotunheim and Laufey dead at your feet, and you refused him.” Told him _no_ , even as he hung above the void, yearning for Father’s approval.

Thor was no child to think his father perfect. He had made mistakes, as all men did. But he refused to see his mistakes, refused to change, continued to make them; that, Thor could not forgive.

Father’s face turned to stone, solid and unmoving. Emotionless. The king, and not the father. “Remember well what happened the last time you stood against me, Thor.”

“Yes, I do. You exiled me, as if you feared the slightest opposition to your voice. Well, I will oppose you as long as that voice says that Loki is not my brother.”

_He is not!_

Thor had guessed it, but never thought to hear it said aloud. To state, without question, before all the assembled court that Loki was cast out. It was one thing to attempt to divide Thor and Loki, to destroy their trust and respect in each other. It was another, far greater, far worse, to avow it to all of Asgard.

Thor and Loki would not be broken, not like this, but Odin was not an enemy he could fight.

Retreat, then.

“If you are not his father, neither are you mine.”

It came from two voices, enraged and wondering. “ _What?_ ”

Thor stepped back, and took Loki’s hand in his without breaking gaze with Odin. “Loki _is_ my brother, and if you deny him then you deny me too. I will not abandon him, no matter how far I must follow.”

Odin’s eye was flickering between both of Thor’s, as if searching for something he did not see, and his expression hung between grief and anger. “Do you know what he has done?”

“I do. Better than you. I have told you he is innocent of what he is accused, but _you_ will not listen! You toss aside my word, and will not even hear his. You say that I must be spelled to defend him! Well, you have taken Loki’s magic from him, and yet, here I stand. No spell, only love, and still that does not convince you! Still you hold to your false judgment!”

How could he continue to believe in this? How could he have watched Loki’s magic shred his skin in its absence and still think he kept hold of a leash around Thor’s neck?

_He can’t._

But that was no answer, either. Why would he be doing this if he too knew it was all a lie?

“Did you ever believe it? Did you ever truly think Loki did this?”

Odin shifted, stance widening as if he meant to attack. “My son-”

“Do _not_ call me that again.” Thor would not hear that, not when it did not apply to Loki. They were brothers first.

Loki.

Discarded Loki, unwanted Loki. Was that what Odin was getting out of this? He had thought of it already, thought that Father wanted them split asunder. What if Loki’s actions were not the cause of that, but merely a chance to make it so? “Is this all just an excuse? You just want a reason, _any_ reason, to be rid of him?”

“It was for _you!_ ” Odin stabbed a finger at Thor’s face, his voice swimming in rage, eye almost wild. “He is a traitor and a liar and he has already tried to kill you twice, and yet you would hand him all of Asgard if he asked it of you. A king cannot afford to be so weak! I want _you_ to be rid of him!”

“That is not your choice to make.”

Loki was his. Nothing else came close to matching that. Not his father, not his home, nothing. He would fling it all away - he _was_ flinging it all away - if he could but keep Loki.

_If a king cannot love, I will never be a king._

This had gone too far already. Thor could not persuade Odin to change his mind; why should he try? If Odin did not want Loki, he would lose Thor as well. Odin could not be allowed to call one of them _son_ and not the other. If Odin cast Loki aside, Thor would fall with him. And be glad of it.

There was a great deal he was losing here. His home, his parents, his name. His friends and companions, whom he had not thought of even once since returning. He would not be able to explain anything to them.

The silence was heavy, like an ocean filled the hall, present and overwhelming. No other voice had spoken. It was as though the whole world was waiting, was not yet certain. The skies held still. They could still go back. Thor could still shake his head and blame the remnants of Loki’s spell, could unsay everything.

But Thor had made his stand, and he regretted not an instant of it. The column of fire through his lips, hot blood starting to slide under his jaw, the sorrow and disappointment on his father’s face. To deny these things would be to wish this wound in Loki’s lips, to still be tugging that needle through broken, screaming flesh. To see the last banked coals of love in his brother’s eyes wither and die, frozen over by ice that nothing would break through.

Thor had come far today. His past, ribboning behind him like a comet’s tail, seemed cleanly severed by the executioner’s axe. But Loki still stood beside him, _brother_ , and that was worth the betrayal and loss in Odin’s eye, worth everything Thor was now giving up.

Thor started walking for the nearest door, behind the throne. Loki matched him step for step. They passed Odin, standing motionless, his grip on his spear white-knuckled. Unshed tears hung in his eye. His face was drained of blood. He looked older than he ever had, alone and horrified. This went beyond even the terrible pain Thor had seen when Odin had exiled him. To be watching Thor exile himself must have been all but killing him.

_Good._

He had ordered Loki to suffer such pain. He deserved to feel it himself.

“Thor…”

He did not answer. What was there to say? Thor could not excuse what he had done to Loki, nor what he had tried to do to Thor. He should have taken this path a long time ago, should have walked everywhere with Loki by his side, never permitted Odin to even think that separating them was possible. But it was not yet too late. Loki was coming with him.

They passed under the arched doorway. The corridor led them to the left, and the sight and sound of the hall faded.

Loki’s hand pulled free of his, seized his jaw, and jerked him around to face him. “Thor, you idiot.” He leaned in close to examine the wounds. Thor barely heard his whisper. “Good aim.”

He could have merely meant that Thor had done it neatly, but Thor knew what Loki was truly saying. _Thank you_. Thor sighed relief. He had made the right choice. Loki too had met his limit for accepting Odin’s wishes. “You’re welcome.”

Loki flashed a smile, still free to do so.

He took the needle, dripping crimson, and pulled it free of the thread. He flung it aside, and it tinkled lightly as it landed, a sound that would have been merry anywhere else. His chains clinked with the movement, a rippling repeat of the needle’s sound.

Thor seized his hand. “Wait.” He grabbed the manacles, and they fell open at his touch. How had he not freed Loki before now? Thor dropped them, his hands stinging at the mere contact. But neither he nor Loki would have to touch the thrice-damned things again. Loki’s wrists were bruised even darker than they had been, two vivid blue-black bands, but now he could heal.

In a flash, his lips burned anew, and Loki held up the freed thread. The punctures became two distinct things, high and low, throbbing and pulsing. He could feel them swelling further, and they would likely scar, but he had taken worse injuries for less cause. This one, for Loki’s sake, was perhaps the best of all.

Thor looked the way they had come. But for them, the corridor was empty; no one had followed them. Unlikely, then, that pursuit would be made. Perhaps Odin thought Thor would change his mind, would return. Perhaps he imagined Loki would turn against him, and try to flee, forcing Thor to bring him down.

Odin had ever misjudged his sons, both of them, if he believed such things.

No. They were not his sons, not anymore.

He was not Thor Odinson.

He was Loki’s brother, and that was all he wanted.

~

“I thought you said he was under guard?”

“He was.”

Loki arched an eyebrow at the unflanked door. If Stark ever had been, he was not now.

Stark.

Loki’s hands slid against his trousers, slippery with sweat. _Blue_ hands. How could Stark feel anything but fear and disgust at the sight of him? He would not even know _what_ Loki was. And even if Loki had not changed, even if he had looked the same as he always had, what was he worth to Stark without his magic? Stark’s request for him to return had been framed in terms of an exchange of information, and Loki no longer had anything to give.

Stark had come to Asgard, and stood before the entire court, for Loki. But that had been a Loki with power, a Loki who still appeared to be a man. He would not accept Loki as he was now.

He stopped, and shook his head when Thor turned to him. How did Thor expect Stark to open his home to them? How did Thor think Stark would still want Loki? “No. There must be somewhere else we can go.”

“Brother, please.” Thor took his hand again. “Stark will not turn away from you, I promise.”

“And if he does?”

Thor’s other hand came to rest on Mjolnir’s haft, hanging from his belt. “Then he will regret it.” Thor walked over to Stark’s door without releasing Loki’s hand, but even with that force tugging him along it was an effort to lift his feet. Strong as Thor was, he could not simply hammer at all of Loki’s problems. He could not ease Loki’s heart if he did lose Stark to this.

Thor opened the door, and pulled them inside.

“ _Fuck!_ ”

Stark’s voice was intense and Loki flinched, but he lifted his chin and looked straight at him. If he was that shocked already, let him see the full horror of what he had bedded.

Stark’s eyes were wide and he hurled himself across the room and crashed into Loki, flinging his arms around him. “Thank _fuck_ , god, what did they do?”

His voice was strange, twisted, but not by anything Loki knew. It was not fear, nor loathing, nor shame, and Stark was holding him as if he had thought he might never do so again…

Concern. That was _concern_ that burned along Loki’s skin, that Stark was pressing into him. Stark had been worried about him. And he still wanted him now. Loki lifted his arms and held him back.

How had Loki ever doubted him? This mind, this brilliance, this _heart?_

“What did they do to you?” Stark’s grip loosened just enough to pull back and look Loki in the eyes. His red eyes, and it was as if that made no difference. Loki could see himself reflected in Stark’s pupils, skin as blue as ever, but Stark might not have even _noticed_.

“Nothing. Thor was…” foolish, wonderful, “noble, and did it to himself.”

“Oh.”

“Of course he did.”

_Mother?_

Loki whirled to face her. It _was_ her, standing right here in Stark’s room, just the same as she had looked the last time Loki had seen her.

When Thor had returned with news of Loki’s lies and treachery, and Loki had blasted him through a wall, and dashed off after him and sworn to explain later. When Loki had brought the Jotuns into Asgard, and they had attacked her.

And then he had fallen.

He had not even seen her after Thor had brought him back, but here she was now. _Mother_. How he longed to say that name, to feel her touch again.

But Odin had abandoned him; had she done the same? How much had she been told of what he had done? Would she even still recognise Loki in this skin-

She stretched out a hand, and her whole face smiled, and he took two strides and fell into her embrace.

He clutched at her, holding her close, for he would not let anything hurt her again. Not even him. Her arms encircled him tightly, as though she had missed him equally desperately, as though she could protect him.

How long had it been since she had held him like this? How long had he been away after falling?

After breaking her heart?

How did he think to stand here in her arms after everything he had done to her? He pulled back gently, and as her touch left him he dropped to his knees at her feet, head lower than he had ever held it. “Forgive me, Mother,” he begged, and his voice was thick with tears, his throat closing on itself. “Forgive me everything.”

“Oh, my Loki,” she whispered, and it bathed him like sunlight. “I do. I always will.”

_Always._

How could he be so loved?

She bent down to him, and lifted his chin. His eyes rose to hers, and he lost his breath at the simple soft love he saw there, the same love she had given him for a thousand years without reservation. Her hand remained held out to him, and he took it and she raised him up. “I know you have to go, but I will be here if you come back.”

If? He had just found her again. How could this be the last time they met?

Because returning to Asgard unwelcomed might well cost him his life, and he did not wish that any more than she did. But he could trust her, _always_ , and if she forgave him and loved him now, then she would do so until the worlds ended. It would be enough.

It would have to be.

And he would have Thor, and he would have Stark, have their love and light and loyalty. How could this have happened? How could Loki simply have been handed what he wanted without even trying to reach for it? This morning he had been prepared to endure torment at the hands of the man he had called _Father_ for a thousand years. He had planned to run and hide, and never see Thor again, to let Stark die while waiting out Odin’s suspicion. And now he had everything.

Greed incarnate, to have them presented to him and wish for more.

Mother stepped away, and walked over to Thor. Stark pressed up to Loki’s side, arms coming around him again, as though the mere minute’s parting had been too long. Loki freed his arm where it was trapped between them, and laid it across Stark’s back. Stark’s head lowered until it rested against Loki’s shoulder. Heat sunk through his clothes, soft and sweet. He could hold Stark and never let him go and count himself satisfied.

Mother’s fingers floated over the wounds in Thor’s lips, and they drifted shut, closing in on themselves until only the spilled blood marred his skin. Thor stretched his lips, and smiled. “Thank you.”

“You did what you thought was necessary. Both of you. I’m proud you chose each other.” The words shook slightly as she spoke, resting her fingers against Thor’s healed lips. “Odin should not have done that. But he, too, did what he thought was necessary.”

“It wasn’t.”

“I did not say it was.”

“What _did_ he do?” Stark asked, head lifting away from Loki’s shoulder. “Thor’s bleeding and Loki’s blue, what’s happened?”

 _Loki’s blue_. It had been so casually said. No fear, no revulsion. Stark did not know what he was. Stark was not his traditional enemy. Stark was not of the race that despised his own. Perhaps to him, it really did not matter.

“This is my true form. The one you know is a magical glamour. Odin stripped it from me, with the rest of my magic, and then ordered Thor to sew my lips shut.”

Stark shuddered. “ _Gross._ Fuck, that’s…”

Disgusting. Terrible. Painful. “Yes.”

“That is not all-”

“It’s enough, Thor,” Loki snapped, before Thor spilled all of his secrets. There was no need for Mother or Stark to hear any more of what had happened, for them to grieve for him. They did not need to know what he had done.

“Very well,” Thor said, and offered Loki a smile; stained, but still Thor’s underneath the red. It faded, expression melting down. “We should go, before Odin thinks to keep the Tesseract from us.”

_If the Tesseract is kept from us…_

Even under Stark’s touch, Loki’s skin crawled at Thor’s words, so close to what the Chitauri leader had told him. But he need not fear, now. The Chitauri would still come, but Midgard would be able to throw them back. He could have Thor and Stark and they would be safe.

They would have to be. He could not give them up now.

“Yes. But give me one moment.” Mother reached out for Loki, and her fingers fanned over his forehead, her eyes closing. Loki’s drifted shut as though compelled to follow hers. Her touch was light and delicate, shifting over his skin, four trails left behind as she moved.

“There.”

Loki opened his eyes again, and met hers. And saw himself in them, the self he knew, pale and green-eyed, skin unmarked.

“That’s the face of the boy I raised. _My_ son.”

Yes, she had certainly not raised a monster. “Thank you.”

She stretched up, and kissed the point her fingers had first touched. Her lips seemed to linger even as she settled back down. “Go. And I will be having _words_ with Odin.”

There it was, a flash of the steel spine that had drawn sword against two Jotun warriors. But for her to bring that against Odin could tear their marriage apart, destroy eternities of love and respect. She might win, might force Odin into seeing it her way, but it would bring her no happiness.

“No, please,” he said. “Please don’t. Not over me.”

“Oh, my Loki,” and she smiled, the smile she had always given when he had done something foolish. “This is no longer only about you. This is family. _My_ family.”

“But we’re the ones leaving, we’re the ones abandoning you. Why would you fight for me when I’m fleeing your very presence?”

“He pushed you away. He wanted…” Her fingers drifted across his lips, her touch soft. “He wanted you hurt, and thought himself right. Perhaps you can forgive that, but I do not. I will not let this go, Loki. Allow me a mother’s vengeance.”

 _Vengeance._ He shuddered at the mere word. He had seen Odin’s face as Thor had walked away from him, seen his soul all but burn black in despair. If Mother thought even that was not enough… She might yet bring all Asgard down. For Loki.

_I would have liked to see that._

“Now go.”

“Come on, Thor’s right, we’re on the clock.” Stark tugged at him, and he followed. Thor held the door open, and Stark pulled him through. He had walked away from Stark like this, on Midgard, but he had planned to return. One plan of many, but there had been a plan. This time there was no chance of such a thing.

He turned back again, one last time, for just one more smile from her, and she gave it to him. Tears lined her eyes, but there was true joy in her face as her gaze swept the three of them.

“Come,” Thor said, his voice cracking, and yes, it was farewell for him too. Frigga was his mother even more than she was Loki’s, and Thor could not easily return to Asgard either.

“Yes,” and that made it possible to turn away from her and follow Thor down the corridor. To leave Mother so he could be with Thor was a price high, yet worth paying. To have Stark’s hand in his, and to know he need never let him go again, was all the bounty of Valhalla laid out before him.

They were a gift he would cherish as long as it was his to hold.

And he would hold it for eternity, for _nobody_ would be allowed to take this from him.

~

New one for the list of things that Tony Stark never thought he would know: traveling by Tesseract did not get any less weird the second time around, because there was something just wrong about being _made of fire_ , how did that even work, and streaking across space at literally impossible speeds like a giant _fuck you_ to Einstein.

The flames burned out into his tower, and they dropped a couple inches onto the floor. His knees jarred, and he leant on Loki’s hand to keep upright, but Loki swayed as well, and Thor, and given that Tony was probably the one in the best shape right now, and he’d been put through the emotional wringer more times in the last few hours than he cared to think about, they had to be almost dead on their feet.

The Tesseract swung down to hang from Thor’s hand as Loki released his end. Tesseract, single most powerful object in the known universe back on Earth, probably a bad idea unless they could limit it. “Okay, we have to do something with that thing, come down to the lab and I’ll see about some kind of containment.” Except the lab was several floors away and he was really in no mood to deal with the fallout from the team of bringing Loki to live with them. “Jarvis, can you clear me a route from here to my lab, keep it empty, nobody knows we’re here. If anybody heard anything just now tell them it was a power imbalance or something.”

“ _Certainly, sir, and may I say welcome home to all three of you_.”

Tony laughed because he hadn’t said anything of the sort and Jarvis still got it completely right, Tony had actually done something _good_ in building this guy. “Thanks, Jarvis. Okay, come on, come on.”

“Welcome home?”

Tony spun on his heel and kept walking backwards. Loki’s eyes were wary like the words hadn’t been _welcome home_ but something along the lines of _I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that_. “Yeah. It’s not like you can go back to Asgard any time soon and why should you be anywhere else? This is probably the only building in the whole world that’s relatively Thor-proof, apart from the pyramids at Giza, and you…” SHIELD probably wouldn’t be happy for one thing, and Tony wasn’t about to lose Loki to _their_ control when he’d just gotten him back from Odin. “I want you here. If you want, that is,” because Tony had really messed up on Asgard, he hadn’t been able to stop Odin and then he’d literally dragged Loki away from his mother, so no surprise if Loki didn’t want to stick around. “Sorry I didn’t do any better back there. Thor said you needed me, but I turned out pretty useless in the end.”

Loki’s eyes went wide and ouch, that was just intense, and Tony turned away because looking into those eyes was like trying to stare down a black hole.

“Useless?” Loki grabbed his arm and pulled him back and damn, there was the black hole again. “Do you not know what you looked like? To see you standing against the Allfather, all your love and fire arrayed there for _me_ …”

Oh, fuck.

_Love._


	8. Truth

The doors swung wide, and Loki stopped on the threshold.

The room shone with light, a thousand projects scattered across the workbenches, movement as Stark’s devices operated even in his absence. Metal creatures and sections of his armor and things Loki could not even name filled his sight everywhere he looked, a gloriously intricate mess that looked as though it should all have fallen apart in an instant. The fact that it had not told of order to the chaos, or possibly chaos to the order, patterns floating just beyond Loki’s reach to explain the layout of the room and the arrangements on the benches. Stark moved among it all as a captain on his ship, knowing how every part related to every other and seeing the functions of the whole as well as the components.

This was Stark’s domain, an empire of a mind that rivaled Loki’s own. This was where his power went; he did not subjugate worlds, he _built_ them anew.

“This is where you create your science?”

Stark was rubbing his hands together and his shoulders were looser than they had been all through his time in Asgard; yes, this was his sanctuary.

And he had brought Loki into it.

“One of the places. I’ve got several more, but Stark Tower’s the newest, so it gets the shiniest toys.”

_Several_ such chambers as this one. How had the world not yet flung itself to his feet?

Stark clapped, the sound bright and clear, and reached out for the Tesseract. Thor hefted the cylinder, and passed it over. The cube pulsed brighter, and hummed, the sound almost lost among the whispering voices of Stark’s machines.

“Okay, containment, good idea, how the hell am I supposed to contain this? Loki?”

“Contain the Tesseract? It has a power of its own, isolating it will not weaken it.”

Stark snapped his fingers. “Isolate, power, perfect! Faraday cage, piece of cake, energy is energy. Jarvis?”

“ _Sir?_ ”

“Scan the Tesseract and build me a model of a Faraday cage to contain it, run me some designs.” Stark laid the Tesseract on an empty table, topped with black glass. Wiry light erupted from it, a glowing cube surrounded by a brassy lattice, and Stark’s hands waved through it and it grew. A projection, just enough form to qualify as _real_. Loki could have made such things himself, once, but now his body was drained and empty.

Yet perhaps Loki still could. Perhaps Stark would teach him of his science. If the generation of it lay not in Stark’s hands, but in the machinery he had built with them, why could not Loki learn to use it?

Stark flipped his model over lightly, and swiped one wall of the cage away from the others to examine it more closely. “Okay, fair warning, I am not going to be decent company until I get this finished, but I don’t think the others should know you’re here yet, don’t want you getting accidentally shot, so hang out in here and don’t touch the stuff that looks like it might blow up.”

Loki nodded. “I shall leave you to your work.” But he would watch, and drink in every piece of learning that Stark offered.

Loki backed away, and found another empty table near Stark’s. He sat on the stool and looked back. Stark was speaking wordlessly to himself, lips moving silently as his hands worked and the light danced through his fingers.

Loki could have watched that forever.

“Brother.”

But Thor was never one to sit idly. “Yes?”

Thor placed a heavy hand on the back of Loki’s neck. “What happened to you?”

Loki’s eyes slipped shut. Not this again. “You already asked me that.”

“I did, and you gave me no answers. You did not tell me _who_ did this, you did not tell me how. But I am not so great a fool as you would call me, and I have been thinking. Do you wish to know what I think?”

Thor would tell him anyway. Once he had something in his head, it took more blunt force than Loki could muster to dislodge it. “Why not?”

“I think the Chitauri did this to you. I think there is much you have not told us of where you went after you fell. Tell me now, brother. Please, tell me. What happened to you?”

Why should he? Why should Thor know any of this? Loki could lie to himself, perhaps, could fool himself into forgetting that it had ever hurt, but for Thor to know the truth would make that impossible. Thor would never allow him to let it go. “Nothing.”

Thor’s voice became iron. “What did the Chitauri do?”

“ _Nothing!_ ”

“Liar.”

_Yes._

“You did not invade Midgard by choice, did you? You were not their ally, you were their prisoner.”

_Yes._

“Those injuries I saw, when Odin stripped your magic from you. The Chitauri did that to you.”

_No._

“Why did you not tell anyone? Tell Odin, tell the court? Tell _me_?”

Loki whipped around to lock eyes with Thor, to strip that longing for Loki’s honesty from Thor’s face. Thor did _not_ want the truth from Loki, but he would not give up searching for it, not until he knew what he had asked for. “Tell you what? Tell you how I fought back until I had forgotten what I was fighting for? Tell you how I killed them until I was buried in their corpses? Would you like to hear how they tortured me until I begged them to kill me with every breath? Do you want to know that every time I screamed for help, I was screaming for _you?_ ”

_Thor is coming for him, Thor will kill them all and make the pain go away, Thor will make everything better. Thor will take the chains off and put his organs back in his body and close the bleeding streaks splitting his skin._

_But he waits and waits and waits, and hurts and hurts and hurts, and Thor doesn’t come._

“Do you want to know what their laughter sounded like when they unlocked my chains and I was too broken to even crawl away?”

_He’s just able to move his hands and hear only silence, and he has his ears this time so he knows it really is silent. He’s free, completely free, but he can’t move, just can’t, has tried though it hurts so much and he’d move if he could even with the pain but he’s simply not going anywhere._

_And then there’s sound like acid in his ears and it drips down his spine and claws at his heart to know they are mocking him._

“Do you want to hear about the magic that let them heal me whole and start all over again? That let them give me my body back piece by piece, so I had something to fear losing?”

_“Remember seeing. Remember having some warning, remember knowing what to expect.”_

_His skin crawls under the hand laid over his face, under the slime and the weight. He feels pressure, deep inside his head, something growing inside him and bursting out and then there is light again, tiny lights, far away, but he knows they’re there, he can see again, they’ve put his eyes back._

_“Think hard about your next answer to my question.”_

“Do you want to hear how I finally gave in? Do you want to know what broke me? Not the pain, not the suffering, none of that.”

_Agony, agony beyond words, beyond thought, almost beyond feeling, but never quite far enough. Pain that simply_ is _, pain that is everything until the world returns again. It is the only way he knows he is alive, because dying cannot hurt this much._

“It was so easy. They should have tried that first, I would have surrendered then.”

“What?”

Loki smiled. “You. They would kill you. That was all it took. The first time they said that.”

_“Think of it. His body lying in your arms, his blood over your hands, all because you were too stubborn to take what we offer. Would you like to see Thor dead? See his lifeless corpse before you? It is very easy. Just say no. That is all it will take. Say no._

_“Give us the Tesseract.”_

“And I broke. I said I would do whatever they wanted. And all they’d had to do was threaten you.”

_He’s not quite right, when they put him back together for the last time. His hair is too long, his skin too pale, his eyes too bright in their too shrunken hollows. And he feels… bigger, somehow, as if they’ve taken hold of his body and stretched it out to fill more space. But they haven’t put anything in to fill the gaps left inside him, and he’s almost transparent, just that little bit less real than he should be._

_His clothes aren’t right, either, less green and more black than he’s used to. His armor is entirely changed, and the horns on his helmet curve outwards, not back over his head, they call attention to him, demand attention, and that’s wrong. He is used to melting into shadows. He is ignored and passed by. But now he is a figurehead for an invasion, and they want him to be noticed._

_He stares at himself until the eyes staring back no longer look like his._

_They’re too blue, for one thing._

Thor was crying. He seemed to have been crying for some time, the tracks of tears long down his face, his eyes flushed and still brimming, and sad, so terribly sad. “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

Loki almost laughed at the stupidity of it. There was Thor, weeping and miserable and fearing for Loki, and he had to ask why? “Because of the look on your face, right now! Because you _pity_ me. You look at me and all you see is a misused prisoner and a slave. You still see it, don’t you, still see the wounds my magic hid. Ruin and destruction, and that’s all you can think about, that _Loki was hurt._ I do not want your pity, I can’t. Because if you pity me… then I must be hurt, I must be their slave, I must be helpless. And I will _not_ be that. I won, Thor, don’t you see?”

He didn’t, of course, he still didn’t, but he would. Loki would not stop until Thor saw, until those eyes refilled with pride and love and they could drink to Loki’s glorious triumph.

“They chained me and tortured me and threatened you, and for that… They. All. Burned. They died, Thor, died shrieking, and here I am, alive and well, with my brother and…” _my lover, my friend, my heart, my,_ “Stark. I beat them, and you will _not_ turn my victory into something I merely survived _._ ”

Thor reached out, and his thumb smoothed away a tear on Loki’s cheek. He had not even noticed them begin to fall, but now he felt the cold, wet roads down his face, matching Thor’s. Disgusting, that he had slaughtered them all and they could still make him weep. “You should have told me the truth.”

“So you could cry for me? So you could feel sorry for me? I will have your loyalty, I will have your friendship, I will have your brotherhood, and prize it all beyond the stars, but I _will not have your pity_.”

“Because I should have known what my own brother suffered! Because I have now judged you _twice_ falsely, first for Stark, and now for the whole of Midgard! How long have I thought you a traitor and a madman, feared you lost to me forever, and now I find that all you have done, all I have cursed you for, you did for love of me.”

Thor took Loki’s face in his hands. Warm and solid and familiar, fitting in like they belonged nowhere else. “No more secrets. _Please_ , brother. No more.”

But he had to, had to keep secrets, he would not see Thor’s face when he learned the rest, when he learned what Loki had done. To tell Thor that would be to undo everything, would drag all that pity back up to the surface and this time it would never go away. There was a balance here, all was not yet lost, if Thor could still think of his own pain. To go any further would be too far.

“I have no more,” he lied. “You saw everything in the hall on Asgard.”

“What was that? When Odin took your magic from you?”

“I had no time to let everything heal naturally. I hid it instead. When Odin stripped my powers, it came back.”

“All of it?” 

Loki scoffed. Did Thor truly think some torn skin was all he had suffered? No, no, he had heard Loki, he knew, he was crying for it. He didn’t know how the magic worked, but Thor could understand pain. “No. I told you the Chitauri had magic of their own. They healed nearly everything. Their power is separate to mine. Odin didn’t touch that.” Or Loki would have died of it indeed. He had thought he would, had expected to when he felt the wounds return.

“But why did they not heal all of it? If their magic was not taken by Odin, where did those injuries come from?”

Ah, yes. Those injuries. The shredded skin, the torn-off fingernails, the broken hands. “Think, Thor. They came back when _my_ magic was stolen.” But Thor’s eyes were still confused, still unknowing, the blue clouded, the white turned red by his tears.

Tears, and he did not know the truth. Truth, yes, Thor would pity Loki if he knew the truth, would weep for him even more than he already had, but if he was weeping already then perhaps it would not be so much more to tell Thor _all_. Loki sighed. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Then tell me!”

“The Chitauri healed what they did. The rest of it…”

_His skin howls, shrieking at every touch, everything screaming loud and painful and he just hurts so much. But it will get better, it’s about to get better, if his skin hurts then he should just get rid of it. But no, that’s not better, that’s worse, so much worse, hurts more and more and more but he can’t stop, not now, he might be so close, it should be working. His fingers are slippery now, slick with blood, but that just makes it easier to shred and tear and make his skin go away, go away._

_But he needs to stop, has to stop, he knows it’s worse like this but he can’t, can’t make himself. He_ wants _to stop but he just won’t._

_Maybe he can, maybe he can force himself to stop, force himself to stop raking at his skin and he drags a hand to his mouth and bites and pulls. The nail comes free and his mouth fills with his own blood and that hurts, hurts so much, but not as much as his body so he sets the next one between his teeth and pulls that one off too. There’s blood everywhere, acid over where his skin isn’t anymore, but he’s keeping the rest of it, he won’t lose any more if he goes through with this._

“Everything you saw, I did to myself.”

It broke through Thor like a wave, striking at the tears until they fell anew, free and fast, over his cheeks. His eyes went wide, staring horrified at Loki as though he still wore the skin he’d shredded. He reached out and took Loki’s hands, running his fingers over them, all of them, looking for what he’d done.

_He pulls at his chains but they’re strong, too strong, and as hard as he tries his hands just won’t fit through. But there’s a solution to that, if he can go through with it, anything is worth it to get away from here, so he grits his teeth and slams his hand back against the rock. Pain flares up like hot spikes through the flesh and he bites down hard to silence himself and he tastes blood, but they mustn’t hear him, they can’t know what he’s doing. He does it again, again and again, until the bones are so broken that he can drag what’s left through the ring around his wrist and he is, technically, free._

_He crushes the other hand, too, holds back his screams and keeps himself steady despite the pain. Hurts, it hurts, but it will only hurt more if he stays here, so he leans up on his elbows and tries to stand._

_Chains rattle behind him and a band closes around his neck._

“Holy fuck _._ ”

_Stark?_

Stark was still here.

And he had heard everything.

Loki ripped himself from Thor’s touch and crossed the room to seize Stark’s shirt in one hand and haul him up level with Loki. His eyes were wide, the dark brown darker, and he might have looked angry if there were anyone, anything, to be angry at here. It couldn’t be anger, couldn’t be, had to be a fearful cover for pity just like Thor’s. Loki had already fallen so far in Stark’s eyes, had gone from the god whose magic had saved his life to Odin’s powerless prisoner, and he would not see himself fall any further.

“The same goes for you as Thor,” Loki spat. “You may offer me your mind, your heart, your love, and I will take them and return you mine a thousand times, but I will _not_ have your pity.”

Stark’s face softened, just a fraction, like he actually wanted what Loki had said. Then his lips thinned, and he drummed his fingers on the arc reactor beneath his shirt, reaching under Loki’s arm, fisted in the fabric at his throat. “I didn’t tell you _how_ I got shrapnel embedded in my chest. Suffice to say it sucked, and you’re not allowed to pity me for that.”

_Sucked_. It seemed insufficient for the flash of tightness around Stark’s eyes, the grim set to his mouth, the lyingly light way he had spoken. But that was the whole point, wasn’t it, to take torment and describe it as small in the hopes of making it so. But Stark failed, for Loki could see the pain riding just beneath the surface, knew that he suffered still.

Yes, for all they were mortals, they could suffer too, could perhaps suffer _more_ than Loki, for their inherent fragility and shortness of life made their agonies all that much greater. A hundred years of pain was significant, but could be overcome, for Loki. For a mortal, that would be their entire lifetime and likely more. Stark could not heal himself from what ailed him; he had to live with it, every day. He could not even hide it, unhealed but unfelt, as Loki had done with his wounds.

Yet Stark, like Loki, had defeated the cause of his pain. Loki had led the Chitauri to their ignoble, screaming deaths; Stark had birthed a star and held it in his chest to keep himself alive. No, he would not pity Stark, not when he had gained such power from his trial, and Stark would know, would _know_ , that Loki was not to be pitied either.

His hand burned, as though it had been Stark’s throat he had captured, as though he could have killed him. “I’m sorry.” Loki dropped him and pressed their foreheads together, bowing to reach the inches down to him, feeling Stark alive and close. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey.” Stark’s hands wrapped around his arms, thumbs sliding up to hook over his shoulders and hold him there, hold him close. “I can take care of myself. And I get it. What happened to you isn’t going to go away overnight.”

Loki’s eyes flashed to Stark’s. He was _not_ weak, this did not still pain him! But their steely set spoke of nothing more than reality, of acceptance of the past. Loki’s wounds were deep and raw, he had been hurt, hurt beyond what he should have survived, and Stark knew all this, but knew it to be a fact like any other.

_It isn’t going to go away overnight._ It was nothing more than a statement.

No pity. Only truth.

And for that, Loki held him close and kissed him.

Heat bled through his lips like a slow dawn, Stark’s lips warm and soft beneath his own. Stark’s tongue slid towards his, and light ran through his body, a sun-warmed river flowing down his neck and chest and legs. The arc reactor in Stark’s chest hummed into his skin, raw power trapped there between them, next to insignificant, for what was that when he had _Stark?_ Loki pulled him nearer, warmth seeping into his whole body where they touched. Stark’s lips moved to suck on one of his, and Loki pushed his tongue forward to touch that skin and drink down the burn again. A hand curled softly in his hair, and Stark’s other hand ran up and down Loki’s arm, a sheet of flame rising and falling.

No Frost Giant was he, when he held fire in his arms. No monster, when such a mind chose _him_.

How had he been prepared to let this go? How had he ever thought to wait for the Chitauri to die, and accept that Stark would die along with them? How had he not hunted down every surviving one of those crawling vermin and slain them that he might have Stark safely?

For he put Stark in danger with this, oh, grave danger. If the Chitauri had learned of Thor, why should they not threaten Stark likewise? But he could not leave, could not flee from the dancing embers that Stark’s fingertips left on him, could not turn away from those hands and that mouth. Stark’s pulse thrummed through his lips, strong and steady, and Stark’s hands pulled him closer, as if Loki would ever, ever, want to leave.

Loki felt _warm_.

Stark broke back, and gasped. “Loki…”

His name in Stark’s mouth became something precious, something beautiful. Heat streaked his cheek as Stark laid his hand there, gaze flickering over the place they touched as if he wondered at it. Then the eyes blinked in a snap, and his body tensed against Loki’s. “Okay, Tony, reality check.” His expression hardened to something Thor might have worn on a dire battlefield.

“Reality check?”

Stark nodded sharply, and stepped away. “You. In a tower full of Avengers. Have to go make sure they don’t shoot you on sight. And trust me, it feels _really_ weird to be asking this, but don’t shoot them either.”

Loki huffed a laugh, and looked down at his hands, his empty, powerless hands. “I could not if I wanted to. My magic is gone, and I am unfamiliar with your weapons. Though I would appreciate it if you kept that a secret.”

“Pity. _No_ pity. Right. Come on, Thor.”

But Thor shook his head. “There is no rush, my friend. They do not know he is here, and tomorrow is soon enough to tell them.” He walked up to them, and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. “If they do not take kindly to Loki’s presence, would you not rather have one night together before we must fight for him anew?”

Stark’s breath was shaky, and the warlike tension drained from his stance. “Yeah. I would.”

_One night together_. One whole night with Stark, _his_ Stark. Loki grinned. “Then leave us, Thor, for you have no part in this.”

“No offense, big guy, but _hell_ no.”

Thor smiled. His lips were still bloody from the needle he had taken for Loki. “I shall go, and will not be seen.”

“Jarvis, help him out with that, lock doors or something until Thor gets to his room.”

“ _Yes, sir_.”

Thor left, hair bright in the lights of Stark’s machines, formal cape swinging. The door sighed shut, and they were alone, together, finally unwatched and free. There were no chains here, no cameras, no captors of any kind. That door would not open to admit anyone.

_Glorious._

At last, _at last_ , Loki pulled Stark to him and his heart sang _mine._

_~_

The cold shock of those lips was like jumping headfirst into the ocean in summer and _fuck_ , Loki was making him _poetic_ now, but it was soft and yielding and just too fucking perfect, and Loki’s tongue slipped into Tony’s mouth and sent chills up his teeth and crawling through his bones. There was an arm around Tony’s back and one up across his shoulders and that hand tangled in his hair and Loki’s grip was desperate like he never wanted to let go either. Tony slipped his arms free from between their bodies and held Loki back, wrapped tight around the base of his spine, and why the hell should he not let his hands slide down and grab Loki’s ass, firm and solid and _oh god_ , he was feeling up a Norse god _while making out with him_. Could his life actually get any better than this? No, no it could not, because he was sucking on Loki’s tongue and had Loki’s ass in his hands and Loki’s fingers in his hair and just _had Loki_ , had him here, to keep and hold on to and never lose again.

Loki pulled back from the kiss and Tony gasped for air and his head spun a little and being dizzy wasn’t great but at least he hadn’t been kissed into actual unconsciousness. Loki’s eyes seared into his, deep dark green like low-lit emeralds and there was the poetry again, goddammit.

“Tell me what you want,” Loki purred, and his voice ran down Tony’s back like an icy waterfall and pooled right in his groin and _oh fuck_ , that felt good, the pressure where their bodies were crushed together and yes, Loki’s cock was starting to poke him right between his hips.

What did he want? He wanted Loki fucking him and him fucking Loki, wanted to suck him off, wanted him in his bed and in his spa tub and in that freezer, fuck, he wanted, “ _Everything._ ” It came out raspy and desperate like he hadn’t had any in months, like it wasn’t only yesterday he’d been fucked until he couldn’t walk.

Loki’s lips stretched into a perfect white mischievous grin and if Odin had been here Tony would have clocked him one for even considering sewing that mouth shut, dammit, this was _his_ , and nobody messed with Tony Stark’s stuff.

“You’re bedding a god, Stark, you _will_ get everything.” And Loki _rolled his hips_ against him and Tony’s skin sizzled and his cock throbbed, straining against his jeans, and this was about to get painful if Loki did _anything_ else. “But I believe this morning you expressed a wish for, what was it? _Real lube and a deeper mattress_ , I think.”

“Oh god,” and Tony’s knees almost gave out and Loki’s arms locked harder around his back to hold him up and if he could just hug him that tightly then what else could Asgardian strength do? “Fuck, my room, _now_.”

He pushed them away from the table and aimed at the lab doors and thank god he’d put his bedroom near his personal lab because he wasn’t letting go of Loki but walking was incredibly awkward because he couldn’t see where he was going and his cock was grinding into Loki’s thigh with every step and his whole skin was vibrating with it and if they weren’t careful he was going to come before they even got to a bed. But Loki was just as hard and Tony wiggled his hips just to be a tease and Loki moaned, low and needy, and _Tony had just made a god moan for him_.

Loki’s lips crashed to his again, cold and fierce, and his scalp burned as Loki tightened his grip in Tony’s hair and Tony moved his hands from Loki’s ass to grab _his_ hair, see how he liked that, and he wrapped his fingers in the feather-light strands and pulled and Loki moaned again. It buzzed through his lips and into Tony’s and _dammit, they had to be near the bedroom by now_ , and he cracked his eyes open and reached out a hand to feel for the door.

He saw it and he seized a handle, _the_ handle, and worked it open and tumbled them both through. It shut behind them and the lights turned on, a nice low silvery-blue like underachieving moons, very good choice by Jarvis. And _ooh_ , Loki’s mouth was shifting, sliding sideways over his jaw and down his neck, _aah_ , tonguing cold into his skin and fingers pulled his shirt away from his shoulder and marked a trail of cold there too, and _fuck_ , how that cold would feel everywhere else-

They needed to be naked. _Now_.

Tony grabbed at Loki’s shirt, something hideously brown that did not flatter him _at all_ , and broke away from Loki to pull it over his head. His hair flowed back from being disturbed, inky black dripping irregularly and Tony dropped the shirt to touch it again, running his fingers through the length of it.

“I could have done this with magic once,” Loki said, hands on Tony’s jeans, voice rough with lust but sad underneath that, sad because he really had lost so much to reach this point.

“You’re here,” and Tony gripped his arms hard so he’d know just how true that was, “and that’s enough impossibility for me.”

Loki’s breath hitched and his fingers stuttered as they pulled the zipper down, and _god_ , he really did care, if he reacted like that to just hearing that Tony wanted him.

Tony was going to tell him that every chance he got.

Not that talking was really important right now.

Tony shoved his jeans down and his boxers with them and tried to kick them free and they caught on his workboots. “Dammit!” He dropped down and yanked at the laces, was there anything less sexy than steel-toed safety gear, except they'd both been wearing boots when they’d fucked yesterday and that had still been pretty damn hot.

But that was _nothing_ compared to the sight of Loki pushing Tony back upright and _actually fucking kneeling_ to take his boots off. Tony’s heart skittered and his stomach lurched and he could tell this really was something serious because he wasn’t making some quip about _kneel before me_. Iron Man wasn’t welcome here, and this wasn’t about taking over the world, this was the two of them not feeling quite so lost because there was someone else in the universe who felt the same way they did and _oh fuck that was cold._

That was Loki’s mouth on his cock, lips tight, tongue sliding left to right and back again along the underside, and just that made Tony’s knees go weak and he was about to fall over, except Loki’s fingers were running up his legs and curving to grip his hipbones.

“Oh, god, _Loki…_ ”

Loki _hummed_ and it sent a million volts sizzling through him and his hands trembled as he threaded them through Loki’s hair. Loki moved back into the touch and sucked on the head of his cock, and that almost _burned_ it was so fucking cold, and Tony had to push him away or he would come right there, actual sex be dammed.

“Get up here.” His voice didn’t actually shake and that was something of a miracle at this point because his whole body certainly was.

Loki’s grin lit up the room as he stood, smooth and easy, and took Tony’s hands in his and swung them out and up to eye level. “I,” he kissed one, a bright burst of cold, “wasn’t,” kissed the other and chilled it to match, “finished.”

“Yeah, but you keep doing that and _I_ will be.”

Loki arched an eyebrow coyly and let him go. “You’re still wearing your boots, Stark. To what were _you_ referring?”

To how Loki had been blowing him not ten seconds ago and was now standing there perfectly shameless. “That’s not fair.”

Loki’s hand wrapped behind a thigh and lifted it and he pulled the boot off, and the sock after it, and that leg of his jeans. “Well, I do always have more than one plan.”

“Good to know,” and now his voice _was_ shaking because dear god, how much creative multitasking had Loki learned in a thousand years? Enough that he was already tugging the other boot off, jeans and sock following it, and Tony kicked them away and yanked at Loki’s pants and _ooh_ , Asgard either hadn’t invented underwear or that was just something of Loki’s because there was skin, right there, glowing as it threw back all the faint light and chilling Tony’s fingers as he ran them across it, up and over the smooth curve of his hips and the slight dips where thighs met torso. Loki was _beautiful_ , and it really was like he had said, Tony was bedding a god, this seriously was a divine being standing here naked before him.

His cock, long and thick without being obnoxious, slightly curving upward as it stuck out, wasn't too bad either.

Loki worked Tony’s shirt up over his head, little shuddering accidental touches sketching out a ladder over his chest as they climbed higher. He lifted his arms and Loki pulled his shirt off and over them and tossed it somewhere. Those hands descended again, ribbons of cold running down his front, and Loki stopped at the scabby crescents from yesterday. “I cut you open,” he whispered, stroking them softly, “and drank your blood from my fingers.” His eyes flickered and his touch was hesitant, like he wasn’t even sure he was welcome.

“ _A_ , you had to,” Tony said, covering Loki’s hands with his and pressing them down, frozen explosions against his skin, “and _B_ , it was one of the hottest things I’ve seen you do yet.”

The eyes snapped back up and _that_ was more like it, that not-quite-evil spark and shine and none of that goddammed uncertainty, and if it took him all night Tony was going to make _sure_ Loki wasn’t uncertain about this anymore. “One of?” Loki’s hands rested on Tony’s hips again and pushed him backwards towards the bed, oh yeah, and Tony locked his arms around Loki’s neck and pulled in turn. “What would you call _the_ hottest thing I’ve done?”

“Hmm,” and Tony tipped his head to the side, pretending to consider, because it was pretty obvious, really, “fucking me senseless probably tops the list,” although saying _hottest_ like slang made perfect sense to him might well have been running a close second.

“Oh, there’s a _list_ ,” Loki said, tongue curling around the sibilants like it had curled around Tony’s cock. “How long would you say this list is?”

Tony’s legs hit the bed and he loosened his grip to slide his hands down Loki’s arms as he fell backwards. “Well, we only had a couple hours, there wasn’t all that much to compile, but there’s probably about a dozen items.”

“Is that all?” but the little quirk at Loki’s mouth gave away how fake the offended tone was. “I’ll have to see what I can add to it.” Loki’s hands planted themselves on either side of Tony’s head and then he dropped fast to mouth at the point between Tony’s collarbones, tongue filling the hollow, and he pushed an arm behind Tony’s back and _moved_ , and turned them hard and shoved them further up the bed so they weren’t hanging off it awkwardly anymore and Loki might have lost his magic but there was a _lot_ Tony could do with a partner that strong. The last few seconds had been a very literal whirl but they had ended _extremely_ satisfactorily; for one thing, Tony had somehow ended up on top. He pushed himself upright to see exactly what he’d got to work with, but given how he was straddling Loki it couldn’t be anything bad.

It was Loki spread out bare underneath him, arms thrown up across the pillows, black hair fanning out over the sheets, and it was really obvious that for all they’d fucked like animals yesterday they hadn’t actually been _intimate_ by the touchy-feely definition of the word. They’d still been mostly dressed and Tony hadn’t gotten to touch _anything_ and he’d been faking pain and panic while Loki had pretended to be hurting him. Amazing as the sex had been, it hadn’t been like _this._

Loki tipped his head back and stretched out his neck, a long pale column, and that was a good enough place to start. Tony laced their fingers together, Loki’s skin so cold that he could feel just how hot his own was, and he bent down, back curving, to lick down that neck. He found a valley between tendon and throat and dipped into it, cold skin cupping the tip of his tongue on every side, and reached Loki’s collarbone and shifted the inch sideways to fill the hollow at the base of his throat just like Loki had done to him. Loki gasped and it vibrated up through Tony’s tongue and kept going, spreading out to cover him as if he hadn’t been supercharged already.

Tony shifted down, down, tongue sliding over a smooth chest, completely hairless, utterly perfect because there was nothing between him and Loki’s skin. He tasted faintly of sweat and something like icy winter mornings, that first sharp breath of air, and _god_ it was good. Loki’s hands were back in his hair again, and Tony was well on his way to developing a hair kink as well as a temperature kink here, because the combination of the two, Loki’s icy fingers on his scalp, had his whole body tightening and cock trying to push right through Loki’s thigh.

Not that Loki was any less hard, one bright point in Tony’s stomach, and he squirmed against it to make Loki moan again. “ _Stark…_ ” His skin still felt cold, no acclimatization at all, probably a mark of how fast Tony’s blood was circulating with this completely unreasonable heart rate. “Tell me how you want me.”

“I said,” and Loki had broken up one of his sentences with kisses so Tony paid him back, sliding low and pressing his lips into the curve of a hip, “I wanted,” reaching across to the other one, avoiding Loki’s jutting cock like the tease he was, “everything.”

He felt Loki’s laugh more than heard it. “Then, since I’ve already had you, you should take me,” and Loki’s legs spread like Tony’s weight pinning them down was nothing. He dropped down between them, sheets stupidly warm after Loki’s skin.

“Good plan,” and that would need lube, so he pushed himself up and crawled over Loki to reach the nightstand, rooting through the drawer, and wow, there was a lot of junk in here, this could take a while, goddammit.

Loki shifted a leg, and ran his foot down Tony’s calf and he almost fell flat, elbows buckling. “Watch it, or I’ll crush you.”

“ _God_ , Stark, I’ll be fine.”

“And I haven’t found the lube yet.”

Loki didn’t have a snappy comeback for that and Tony glanced away from the drawer to see him biting his lip hard, eyes shut tensely, and that was probably another thing he could have done for himself once. “Magic?”

“Yes.”

Well, fuck it, Tony was an engineer and this was as good a way as any to establish science’s superiority and _yes, that was the lube!_

He pulled the bottle out and waved it jauntily, an action totally wasted because Loki wasn’t looking and Tony wasn’t _that_ triumphant at finding it. Well, if Loki wasn’t going to watch then he could just be surprised. Tony flipped the lid open and covered his fingers, nice and fast before Loki could open his eyes after all and ruin this new plan. He shifted back down the bed, which he should probably have done first, because it was awkward moving with only one hand which was also holding the bottle. He knelt between Loki’s legs, wiggled his fingers to spread the slick, and reached out.

The first perfectly-aimed touch to Loki’s asshole had him gasping, body jerking and eyes flying wide. Tony gave him a grin, and if just that had snapped him out of his no-more-magic fugue then _this_ should go a long way towards driving it away for good. “This is how we do prep on Midgard,” and he pushed a finger in.

Loki shuddered and his mouth dropped open, and he was tight like a vice around Tony’s finger, their pulses jackhammering in tandem, the combined throb almost painful. “Good?”

Loki’s jaw worked up and down before he managed words. “ _Fuck,_ Stark, _more!_ ”

He wasn’t _quite_ a babbling mess yet, but Tony would have bet he wasn’t thinking about anything but this. He pushed a second finger in and Loki stretched around him, muscles quivering as he forced them to relax. The cold was still the invigorating kind, the kind that nearly burned with how cuttingly sharp it was, and Tony probably wouldn’t get frostbite from this but even if he did it would be worth it.

But speaking of sticking his cock into dangerous places, “Jarvis? Found anything in my blood I should know about?”

“ _Nothing, sir._ ”

“Excellent,” and Tony pushed his fingers apart and Loki’s breathing went ragged, his whole body writhing and his hands twisting in the sheets. Loki was tight but yielding around his fingers, working with Tony as he pushed. “Good?”

“If you ask me that _one more time-_ ”

Tony laughed over what would have been a very creative threat if he’d been in the mood to listen. “Okay then. How about asking if you’re ready?”

Loki pushed himself up on his elbows and behind the strands of hair over his face his eyes had gone dark and grave. “I never asked you that. I did not ready you at all.”

Tony shrugged, because how often would the worst parts of yesterday come between them like this when they really didn’t matter that much? “It was _fine_ , don’t let Odin get to you, I loved it. It didn’t just let us escape, I loved it and you know that.” He slid a third finger in and rotated them, Loki loose and slick enough that he wasn’t straining too hard for it, and Loki dropped to the bed, back arching. “So stop worrying about hurting me, I’m mortal but I’m not _that_ delicate.”

He pulled his fingers free and rubbed them over his cock for the extra slickness, shuddering at the cold, and shifted forward, lifting Loki’s hips up over his and touching his cock to Loki’s asshole. “Anything to add?”

Loki fought his way back vaguely upright, his gaze fierce. “ _Never_ mention the Allfather in bed again.”

“Deal,” and Tony flexed his fingers on Loki’s hips to get a firm grip and pushed an inch in, they’d had to go really fast yesterday so he could afford to make them both wait for it a little-

Loki’s hands seized his hips in turn. “Don’t toy with me, Stark,” and _Loki pulled him in,_ just like that, one hard jerk burying Tony in his body and _oh, god, yes_ , they could do slow another time because Tony wasn’t about to _not_ roll his hips and feel the cold everywhere around his cock, muscle strong and solid. “ _Yes,_ ” Loki gasped, and wrapped his legs tight around Tony’s waist and _oh_ that felt good, more cold, more strength, and Loki surged up and had them chest-to-chest and that felt even better. Tony held him close, arms along Loki’s back, feeling the flesh ripple as Loki moved, hands on Tony’s shoulders, up and down and his blood boiled with that, the slippery slide along his cock better than _anything_.

“Oh god,” he gasped, and grabbed Loki’s head and dragged it down to kiss him, cold everywhere like he was buried in an avalanche, a fucking sexy avalanche with pitch black hair and glowing green eyes and a tongue in his mouth making his teeth ache, that kind of avalanche.

Loki clenched around his cock and moved again, _tight_ and _icy_ and he slid up and up and _up_ , hovering with just the tip inside him and Tony’s heart throbbed, almost choking him, and Loki sank down again, his cock running along Tony’s stomach with the movement, and Tony reached between them with his lubed hand and took hold.

Loki _screamed_.

And Tony didn’t have to ask, that _was_ good, it was a scream that demanded _more_ and Tony gave, running his hand up and down, feeling Loki’s cock long and cool and alive, shuddering in his grasp, and Loki was shaking.

Then he seized Tony’s shoulders hard and _pushed_ and the world spun again and the mattress hit his back and knocked him breathless, and when he blinked and everything swam back into focus, he was on his back and Loki was perched smugly above him, hands on Tony’s chest, framing the arc reactor. The arches of his face were lit and shadowed by its blue light and it lent a definite mischievious cast to his smirk, as if Loki needed any help in that department.

“Your turn to scream,” he said, unfairly coherent, stringing together full sentences like that.

“Really? Because I’m not- _aah,_ ” Loki clenched tight around his cock, _ohhh,_ cheating bastard, “usually a screa…” and Loki’s thighs clamped down tight on his sides and turned the word to shuddering gasps, _definitely_ cheating, “screamer.”

Loki’s eyebrows rippled. “You were the last time you were on your back for me. You lay there and howled until I think you had forgotten you were acting pain and cried your pleasure freely instead. Did you truly like it so much? Like being pinned below me, forced to take whatever I gave you?”

Actually that had never been one of Tony’s kinks but the steely clasp of Loki’s hands around his wrists, pulling them above his head and holding them there, and the coy roiling lust in Loki’s voice were worth exploring further. “Having you do all the hard work for me? Guess I really _am_ a genius.”

Loki laughed, and shook his head slowly. “No, Stark. Now move.”

“Make me.”

Loki’s pupils exploded to even greater proportions and his grin stretched and his tongue slid over his teeth and _god_ , Tony would have _eaten_ that smile if Loki hadn’t been pinning him down.

“ _Move_ ,” and that was that icy voice again, the one he hadn’t bothered to use in the invasion, the one that held more command than _kneel_ ever had, and Loki’s ass loosened just a bit and Tony thrust up chasing the cold-

Oh. He’d moved.

“That’s cheating!”

“Is it?” An eyebrow arched in a perfect parabola. “Is it cheating? I made a request, and you chose to comply.”

Right. So it was _that_ kind of game. God or not, Loki had picked the wrong guy to play with if he thought he was going to win.

Tony’s cold kink had to be matched at least a little bit by a heat kink in Loki, hadn’t he called Tony _love and fire_ just before? Okay. He wiggled free from Loki’s grip, and Loki sat back up and just watched Tony breathe on his hands and rub them together, hard, pulling the blood to the skin and pushing out the chill from touching Loki. Friction was a wonderful thing.

“What are you doing?”

Tony arched an eyebrow back. “ _You_ move,” and grabbed Loki’s icy cock in hands that felt hot even to himself.

Loki surged, crying out and throwing his head back, gorgeous throat stretching, light shifting over his chest as he breathed desperately, and _Tony was being ridden by a god._ His hips rocked and slid over Tony’s, pressure moving around his cock, touching it harder there - no there - _there_ \- and Loki’s own cock throbbed in his hands.

They squeezed together, Tony’s hands and Loki’s ass, and Loki’s skin spread across his vision, coloring everything glowing white and he came _hard_ , skin tingling with heat everywhere Loki didn’t touch him, hot over his back and legs and chest but his hands cold and his sides cold and his cock coldest of all.

Loki dropped, bent over, head falling to Tony’s chest. Tony’s throat burned with the air rasping down it and his ears were ringing, so at least he and possibly Loki as well had screamed again but really, _not_ screaming would have been the more impressive thing, any level of self-control beyond not actually _dying by accident_ wasn’t an option. His stomach was streaked with cold wetness, Loki’s come, and he felt himself grinning, because coming was one thing but making a god come with you was really quite another.

Loki wiggled against him, smearing the come over both of them, and planted one hand in the mattress and rolled them gently onto their sides. Loki’s lips had ended up only an inch from his and Tony leaned in to kiss him again. Still soft, still cold, gentle and smooth and easy. Loki moved again, leg sliding out from under Tony’s body, and Tony’s cock fell free, hitting his thigh and after Loki’s touch that was _hot_.

Was that how he felt to Loki all the time? Probably, thermodynamic differences…

No, he had just fucked a god, fucked _Loki_ , science could wait.

It would be done, but it could wait.

Wait for, for example, Tony rubbing his fingers over his stomach, coating them in Loki’s come, and pulling back from the kiss to raise them to his lips. Loki’s eyes widened and his own lips parted as Tony licked the first finger clean. Salt and sweet and something foresty, something like pine trees or mossy rocks, something natural and wild and beautiful and _cold,_ obviously.

Loki took his hand and drew it over to his own mouth, and sucked down a whole finger, probably just to one-up Tony and prove he could do better. His teeth were sharp where they brushed Tony’s finger and his tongue swirled over the whole thing, quick and flexible. His eyes stayed locked on Tony’s, watching Tony watching him watching Tony, and he could have _drowned_ in that color, that perfect bottomless green, and if Loki’s skin had been everything he’d seen when he’d come, what would it be like to come while looking in those eyes, to see that green and nothing but?

_I want everything._

And he was damn well going to get it.

Loki let his finger slide free, smooth and slow like he’d mouthed Tony’s cock before, and his hand fell lightly between them on the pillow.

“What now? How is this done on Midgard?”

Tony’s pulse stuttered at Loki’s voice, cool and composed with just a tiny ragged edge running through it but it wasn’t fair how very nearly he came to sounding completely unaffected. Tony breathed deep and made his voice come out even steadier. “Well, some people would switch positions and go again, and I’d be up for that if I hadn’t had a day like this one.”

“Like what?”

“Like waking up, _restrained_ , in a hospital, saving your life from Thor, watching you leave, being interrogated by two masters, losing my best and oldest friend, trying and failing to save your life from - oh, no, not mentioning the Allfather in bed - from Asgard and breaking all the accepted laws of physics twice. That kind of day.”

Loki smiled like he would have grinned if he’d had the energy to pull his lips that tightly. “How about _not_ waking up because I never slept due to Thor pinning me to a wall, having to walk away from something I wanted more than almost anything in the universe, being chained and gagged none too gently, learning just how much my former father despises me, watching Thor sew his own lips shut rather than do it to me, and finding and losing my mother almost within the same minute? How do you like that for a day?”

“Worse than mine,” but that wasn’t really the _point_ here, it only sounded like they were trying to outdo each other, it was actually about saying _yes, look at what we have come through to get here_. “It ended well, though.”

“Very well.” Loki ran his fingers through Tony’s hair and ooh, he hadn’t washed it in a couple of days and he’d been working pretty hard and now was not a great time to remember that, but Loki didn’t seem to care and they probably didn’t even _have_ shampoo on Asgard so Tony didn’t really care about the state of Loki’s hair either apart from _fantastic_. “And has it ended?”

“Hmm,” they _were_ kind of dirty and sleeping while covered in come wasn’t fun. “Shower first?”

“If you wish.”

Tony swung his legs off the bed and pushed himself up and he wasn’t even shaking anymore. Loki stood too and pressed along his back, arms around Tony’s waist, hands stroking over his skin, lips on his shoulder, all but worshipping him like he was something precious. Tony just stood there and let Loki hold him, because Loki had almost lost him too, had watched Tony get dragged away and not known what would happen, and if he needed some proof that Tony was still here with him then he was perfectly happy to let Loki take what he was after.

And they weren’t even done yet, tomorrow they would have to deal with the Avengers and SHIELD and the loss of Loki’s magic and comb through everything Loki had said in the lab, but right now there was this, was just standing there with each other and being close and knowing beyond any doubt that this wasn’t just about sex.

Awesome as the sex was, that wasn’t the only thing going on here.

Maybe Loki had been right.

_Love?_

Whatever it was, it was working.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.
> 
> Acknowledgements first:
> 
> [Haldane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Haldane/pseuds/Haldane) for the beta.
> 
> Loki skinning himself with his nails is borrowed from Lois McMaster Bujold's _Mirror Dance_. One line, _"You lie vilely"_ , is taken from Bujold's _A Civil Campaign_. This series is amazing, read it.
> 
> Anything involving lip sewing was written with thanks to the staff of Hairhouse Warehouse, who answered my carefully-worded questions about 'lip piercing'. 
> 
> Apology second:
> 
> To Clint fans, I know at the end of _Heart And Hurt_ I promised I would explore his reaction and recovery from Loki's mind control. I dropped that out here; there's a tiny hint of it in chapter 4, where Clint and Natasha confront Tony, but that's all you're getting until...
> 
> Drum-roll third:
> 
> Part Three, _Spirit And Sacrifice_ , is going to happen! Tony's fought for Loki against his own teammates, and against the king of the gods; now he's taking on an entire army for him. Odin's got what was coming to him; now the Chitauri get theirs. If Tony can pull it off, that is, because they're not about to make it easy.
> 
> Apology fourth:
> 
> Uni exams start in two weeks, so I won't be able to begin for about a month. _Despair And Defiance_ took me about two months to write, so don't expect to see anything until about January. This will definitely not be a Christmas gift. Unless I have a sudden attack of inspiration... Anything's possible.
> 
> Love fifth:
> 
> Speaking of gifts, _thank you all_ for reading, kudos-ing, and especially reviewing. Writing with support is infinitely more satisfying than just typing words out for me to read over again. And it was hilarious like you cannot believe to read all of your comments at the end of chapter 6 with the lip sewing: "Has Thor done what I think he's done?" "OMG Thor, did you...?" "Thor, if you've done what I think you've done I love you." Extra thanks because _nobody_ wrote down their guesses and spoiled it for everyone else. 
> 
> I hope to see you all in January, or possibly earlier, for _Spirit And Sacrifice_.


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